Skills

What a skill is

A skill is a saved set of instructions plus example phrases for what it’s for. Turning one on changes how Falcon approaches the request and which tools it reaches for, including anything connected through MCP Connectors, rather than just answering off a single prompt. A trigger phrase is an example of how someone might ask for this skill, recorded on the skill and shown on its card.

flowchart TD
accTitle: What a skill contains, its two kinds, and how it becomes active
accDescr: A skill bundles instructions, the tools it reaches for, and trigger phrases. A built-in skill is visible everywhere, while a custom skill is scoped to one workspace. A skill becomes active for a conversation when picked from the Skills menu or typed as a slash command.
subgraph Contains["What a skill contains"]
  Instructions["Instructions"]
  Tools["Tools it reaches for"]
  Triggers["Trigger phrases"]
end
Skill["Skill"] --> Contains
Skill -->|"visible everywhere"| BuiltIn["Built-in skill"]
Skill -->|"scoped to one workspace"| Custom["Custom skill"]
subgraph Activation["How a skill becomes active"]
  Menu["Picked from Skills menu"]
  SlashCmd["Typed as slash command"]
end
Skill --> Activation
Menu --> Active["Active skill for the conversation"]
SlashCmd --> Active

Built-in and custom skills

Falcon ships with a set of built-in skills. They show up in every workspace, and nobody can edit or delete them: a built-in skill’s card in the Customize panel offers only Duplicate, with no edit or delete control. If a built-in skill is close to what you need, duplicate it there and adjust the copy instead of trying to change the original.

Custom skills belong to a workspace. Anyone who creates one is creating it for the whole workspace, not just themselves, so every member of that workspace sees it and can trigger it. See Create a skill for how to open the editor and build one from scratch.

Turning a skill on

A skill becomes active for a conversation in one of two ways:

• Pick it from the Skills menu in the Falcon AI header
• Type its slash command at the start of a message

For example, typing /debug-traces at the start of a message runs the Debug Traces skill directly; if it doesn’t match a skill, Falcon treats the text as an ordinary message instead.

What ships built in

Every workspace includes these built-in skills:

• Analyze Costs
• Analyze Trace Errors
• Build a Dataset
• Analyze Cluster
• Compare Models
• Debug Traces
• Fix with Falcon
• Localize Errors
• Optimize Prompts
• Run Evaluations

Why it matters

Skills exist to make the same investigation come out the same shape every time, whether you run it or a teammate does, instead of everyone describing what they want from scratch. A skill is guidance, not a macro: you can add constraints, redirect the investigation, or ask follow-up questions after it’s active, and Falcon incorporates them rather than running a fixed script to the end.

Keep exploring