What are AI skills?
A skill is a packaged ability an agent can call, such as drafting a document, searching the web, or creating a spreadsheet. The agent picks a skill based on the request.
Also called: skill
In plain English
Meta's Muse help describes skills as built-in tools the agent already has, like documents, images, or web browsing. Other products use the same word for a saved instruction plus a tool. The label matters less than the permission: can this skill send, buy, or only draft? A skill is a packaged instruction, not a new employee. Read it before you enable it. If it tells the assistant to browse, send, or edit files, that is a permission decision wearing a friendly name. Turn on one skill, run it on a job you already understand, and keep it only if the result matches the way the shop actually works.
How an owner would use it
Read the skill list before you turn an agent loose. Disable skills you do not want, especially anything that spends money or messages people. Ask the agent what it can do, then test one skill with a harmless task.
Common mistakes
A skill list is a permission list with friendlier names. Owners enable every skill 'to see what it can do' and find a purchase or a sent email. Meta's Muse pages describe skills as built-in tools and say sensitive actions should ask first. Copy that pattern anywhere: off until you have run one harmless skill. Do not confuse a skill with an SOP. The SOP is your process. The skill is a capability that might ignore it.
A worked example
A plant nursery
A care sheet, not a supply order
This is an illustration, not a customer result. The owner asks the agent for a one-page watering sheet for a shrub they actually sell. The document skill can run. The shopping skill stays off, so nothing is ordered. The sheet goes into the folder staff already hand to customers.
Related terms
Prompts and guides
Questions owners ask
What are AI skills?
Skills are named capabilities an agent can use to do a kind of task. Meta describes Muse skills as built-in tools such as documents, images, and browsing.
How do I use skills?
Turn on the ones that match the job, leave spend and send skills off until you want them, and check the result before it is treated as official.
Are skills the same as tools?
They are the same family. A tool or function is something the model can call. A skill is a packaged version a vendor named, sometimes with instructions attached. Judge both by what they are allowed to change.
Product guides are on AI apps for business.