Skills

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.maia.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

A skill is a set of reusable instructions that can use to better respond to your prompts. Skills are useful if you often give repetitive prompts—they provide guidelines and standards for to follow, which means you don’t need to include this information in every prompt. Skills are:

• Intelligently activated: choose when to use skills based on the prompts you give. For example, if you prompt to “create a new table” and you have created a skill that contains guidelines on table naming conventions, can choose to use this skill when creating your new table.
• Resource-aware: Skills can reference additional files, such as template documents or example pipelines, that are stored in the same folder as the skill file. These can be used to provide with more context. These files can be Markdown files, pipelines, or Python or SQL scripts if these are supported in your environment.
• Stackable: can use multiple skills in their response if relevant. This depends on how they interpret your prompt, as described above.

For more information about agent skills in a wider context, read the Agent Skills documentation.

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When to use skills and context files

Skills and context files should be used in different ways to help understand your data and provide better responses to your prompts. The table below clarifies some of the differences between skills and context files.

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Skill best practices

• Write effective skill descriptions
  • Clearly define the trigger: Describe the specific scenarios or tasks where this skill applies.
  • Use keywords: Include terms that are likely to appear in related prompts.
  • Avoid overlap: Ensure each skill has a distinct purpose that doesn’t conflict with other skills.
• Structure skill instructions clearly
  • Start with the goal: Begin with what the skill should accomplish.
  • Provide step-by-step guidance: Break complex procedures into numbered steps.
  • Include templates: If the skill produces structured output, provide example templates.
  • Specify constraints: Note any requirements, limitations, or standards that apply.
• Test and refine skills
  • Test with varied prompts: Try different phrasings to ensure the skill activates appropriately.
  • Check for false activations: Verify the skill doesn’t trigger for unrelated tasks.
  • Iterate based on results: Refine instructions when outputs don’t match expectations.
  • Keep skills focused: If a skill becomes too broad, consider splitting it into multiple targeted skills.

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Built-in skills

have access to built-in skills that are designed to help with common tasks and use cases in . These built-in skills cannot be edited. The table below lists the built-in skills that can use to respond to your prompts.

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Create a skill

To create a skill, in the bottom left of the chat interface, click the Skills drop-down menu and then click Add new skill. This will start a conversation with in which you can tell the purpose of the skill and ask them to build the skill for you. You can also describe the problem you are trying to solve, and ask to create a corresponding skill. For example, you could give the following prompts:

• “Create a skill to enforce naming standards for all new tables and columns.”
• “Create a skill for loading data from Jira, using @my-jira-pipeline as an example pipeline. All new pipelines loading data from Jira should use the same authentication and connection options.”

In the second example, you can add the my-jira-pipeline orchestration pipeline to the folder that create containing the SKILL.md file. This will prompt to use the example pipeline as additional context when using this skill.

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Making skills available at project level

Skills are committed and pushed in the same way as pipelines in your project. Once you have created a skill in your branch and pushed it to the remote, other users in the same project can merge from branch to pull your changes into their own branch. This will allow them to use the skill you have created.

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Use skills in Maia AI Agents prompts

will automatically use any relevant skills whenever you prompt to complete a task. If you want to tell to use a specific skill, type @ in the chat interface, followed by the name of your skill. The SKILL.md file in the corresponding skill’s folder will appear in a dynamic list—press Enter or click the skill to reference it in your prompt.

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View and edit skills

You can view a list of all skills available in your project by clicking the Skills drop-down menu in the bottom left of the chat interface. Skills are stored in your project in a folder in the following location: .matillion/maia/skills/[skill name]/SKILL.md. To edit a skill, open the SKILL.md file for the corresponding skill. You can do this in two ways:

• Click the Skills drop-down menu. Open the Project section of the skills list, and click the Edit icon next to the name of the skill you want to edit.
• In the Files panel, navigate to the SKILL.md file.

At the top of the SKILL.md file, you will see the name of the skill, and its description. use the description of your skill to determine when to use this skill. We recommend being as specific as possible about the purpose of this skill, so that activate it when suitable. The rest of the file contains the information that need to use the skill, such as naming conventions, guidelines, and additional context. It’s important to remember that will interpret these as guidance, not hard-coded rules. If you want to provide stricter instructions for to follow, use context files.