## [AI Skills: Part 1 - Making and using Skills (the easy way)](/blog/ai-skills-part-1-making-and-using-skills-easy-way) What's a Skill? It's pretty simple really: it's a set of Markdown files, maybe some YAML, maybe some scripts as well, that describe a *process* for your AI to follow. I'm glossing over a lot of it there, but this is the "Skill" tool's use: a process which AI can follow when prompted. > **Aside:** How is a Skill different to an "agent"? Well, agents are broadly (very broadly) instances of an LLM that *do stuff* whilst a Skill is the process an agent would follow to *do the stuff* in a specific and precise way. So how do you make one? And once made, how do you use it? Most tutorials I've seen go into a huge amount of depth, pointing out the structure Skills should take, linking to , and detailing the directory you need to put everything in, etc. But if you're desperate to get in there and get your hands dirty and *do* something then this can all feel very slow and dull... and don't we have AI tools to do all that boring stuff for us anyway? (Yes, we do.) ## Step 1 - find a problem a Skill could help you solve This is the *real* hard task. There's often such a furore to use AI that it sometimes seems like people search for problems to apply their solution to, and everything starts to look like a nail when you're desperate to try swinging your brand-new hammer. But we don't want to do that. AI can be a boon, but let's not apply it where it isn't needed. AI has enormous potential without being shoehorned in where it is not wanted. So, as an example, let's consider a Skill I have made for my own use recently: an article reviewer/editor. As the editor of these blog posts, I need to review the contents before they're published. There are several tasks I need to perform that are ordinarily a bit of a slog, but necessary overall. - Spelling/grammar review. Mistakes get made, errors slip through, it is **always** sensible to do one more sanity check. - Our headings on the portal use sentence case, but people (usually myself) forget this and write them in "Upper Camel Case", and they all need to be fixed. - Do the code snippets have the correct language selected? We use Markdown, and this is necessary for adequate syntax highlighting. - Do the heading orders make sense? We can't have more than one level 1 heading in an article. - Are any acronyms used? If they are, they should be expanded the first time they're used, unless they're so commonly encountered as acronyms that this is unnecessary, such as "HTTP" or "AI". This set of tasks is perfect for a Skill. They require very little personal judgement, and the results can be easily checked. So how do we go about turning it into an actual tool? ## Step 2 - make the Skill (by asking the AI to do it) You don't need to do anything fancy. The Skill structure is well known and understood by most large language models (LLMs), so just describe what you want to do, append the instruction "turn this into a Skill please", and away it goes. I did this with the instructions above through Microsoft (MS) Copilot and made a Skill in less than 5 minutes. [The Skill Microsoft Copilot produced can be found here.](https://github.com/ansys/DevRelPublic/raw/refs/heads/main/Articles/AI%20Skills%20Tips%20and%20Tricks/SKILL.md) ## Step 3 - use the Skill (by just bunging it into the AI) In order to use the Skill, you can ask the AI "how can I install a custom Skill", and it will help you put it in the right folder and set up the structure. However, this method has some caveats. Your AI tool must have access to your computer and the files therein (otherwise it can't see the Skills, right?), so tools like MS Copilot, which may be browser-based, can't easily have permanent custom Skills. Some subscriptions may not even support the addition of custom Skills for all kinds of reasons. **BUT** You *can* just attach your Skill as a file, or directory, to a prompt and tell the tool to use it in that prompt... and it will do it! The obvious downside is that you'll need to attach it every time, but that's really not so bad for the price of getting up and working with your Skill *right now*. ## Summary - Find an issue that you could make a Skill for. - Describe your Skill to the AI; it will generate a Skill for you. - Download that Skill and save it somewhere sensible. - Add it to prompts where you want the Skill to be used. - Profit. It can be just that easy. --- If you enjoyed this article consider reading... - [Part 2: Developing Skill sharing and boosting its quality](https://developer.synopsys.com/blog/ai-skills-part-2-developing-skill-sharing-and-boosting-its-quality)