Add skills to an agent

Skills live in your skill library until you hand them to an agent. Each agent gets only the skills you switch on for it, so a bookkeeping agent can carry the invoice skills while your support agent carries the reply-tone skill.

Before you start#

• At least one skill in your library. Write one or add a starter skill on the Skills page. If the library is empty, the agent's Skills panel offers a Create a skill button that takes you there.
• A Hermes agent that has finished setting up. Skills can be imported into Hermes agents today; on other runtimes the Skills panel does not appear. The Brain section unlocks once setup finishes.

Switch skills on#

1. Open the agent and click Settings, then Brain.
2. Scroll down to Skills. Every skill in your library is a card, showing its name and its "when to use it" line.
3. Click a card to switch it on (1). Click it again to switch it off. The badge counts how many are on, for example "1 of 2 on".
4. Click Save skills (3).

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The bar at the bottom says Unsaved changes. until you save, then Saved.

When the agent starts using a change#

A change applies from the agent's next conversation. A conversation already under way keeps the skills it started with, so to try a change straight away, start a new chat, or send /new in a messaging app such as Telegram. Scheduled tasks always start fresh, so their next run uses the change.

When skills change, Qoren restarts the agent's messaging and chat service if it is running, so that new conversations see the new list. A reply the agent is writing at that moment can be cut off; send the message again if that happens.

How the agent uses a skill#

When you save, Qoren writes each skill you switched on into the agent's own skills folder, as a SKILL.md plus any files the skill bundles. Skills you switched off are removed from that folder.

The agent always knows which skills it has and when each one applies, from their "when to use it" lines. When a task matches, it opens that skill's full instructions and follows them, and opens a bundled file when the instructions call for it. So you do not need to tell the agent to use a skill: describe the task, and it reaches for the right one.

If an agent never seems to use a skill, the "when to use it" line is usually too vague. Edit it in the library to name the situation plainly. The agent gets the new wording on its own, as described below.

Edits and deletions reach the agent on their own#

When you save a change to a skill in the library, Qoren sends the new version to every agent that has it switched on, within moments. When you delete a skill from the library, Qoren removes it from every agent that had it. You do not need to visit each agent.

An agent that is switched off, paused, still setting up or unreachable at that moment is not skipped for good. It gets the change once it is running again, usually within 15 minutes, and a repair also brings its skills up to date.

Until a change has landed, the agent's Skills panel lists what is on its way (2): a skill with a newer version in your library is marked Update waiting, and a skill you deleted is listed as still on the agent. To send it right away, click Save skills, which is available even when you have not changed the selection.

Remove a skill from an agent#

Switch the skill's card off and click Save skills. The skill is removed from the agent's folder, and your library copy stays.

To remove a skill from every agent at once, delete it from the library.