Skills
Last updated: October 12, 2026
A skill is a short set of written instructions that teaches the Layer agent how your studio does something: your icon rules, your sprite export spec, your art bible for one game, your checklist before a playable ships. You write it once, and the agent follows it in every chat where it applies, so nobody has to repeat the same brief in every session.
Why studios use skills
The agent already knows how to generate, edit and assemble assets. What it cannot know is how your team does it: the canvas size your engine expects, the outline weight your UI uses, the words your brand never says, which character is left-handed. Without a skill, that knowledge lives in someone's head and in long prompts people copy between sessions. With a skill:
- Every brief starts from the studio's standard. A new artist gets the same result as the art director who wrote the rules, because the agent reads the same rules for both.
- Briefs get shorter. "Make a fire resistance icon" is enough when a skill already says how icons are made.
- Rules change in one place. When the export size moves from 256 to 512 pixels, edit the skill and every chat picks it up on its next message.
- Different work gets different rules. A skill can apply to the whole workspace, to one project, to one session's board or to one reference set, so a client project can follow that client's rules without affecting anything else.
What a skill contains
Name
A short, lowercase, dash-separated handle such as ui-icon-style or sprite-export. It is how the agent refers to the skill and what you type after / to run it by hand. It is unique in the workspace.
Description
One or two sentences that say when the skill applies, for example "Use when making game UI icons, buttons or HUD elements for Ember Tactics." With the When relevant loading mode, this is the only part the agent reads before deciding to load the skill, so write it as a trigger, not a summary.
Instructions
The body of the skill, written in markdown: the rules, the steps, the dos and don'ts. Once a skill applies, its instructions go into the agent's context in full, so keep them short and specific. A page of clear rules works better than ten pages of background.
Files
Optional supporting material the agent opens only when it needs it. References (under references/) are markdown documents for detail, such as a full lore bible or a per-platform export table. Assets (under assets/) are images, video or audio from your library that the agent can use directly, such as a palette swatch, a logo lockup or an example of a finished icon it can pass to a generation as a reference.
How a skill loads
Each skill has a loading mode that decides when its instructions reach the agent.
Always
The instructions are loaded into every chat the skill is in scope for, whatever the request. Use it for standing rules that apply to everything, such as a studio style guide or a list of forbidden content.
When relevant
The default. The agent sees the skill's name and description, and loads the instructions only when the description matches the task. A sprite-export skill stays out of the way while someone writes ad copy, and loads as soon as someone asks for frames for the build. This mode needs a description.
Manual
The skill never loads on its own. It applies only when someone types / and the skill's name in the chat. Use it for procedures you want to start on purpose, such as a release checklist or a batch export routine. A manual skill can be run from any chat in the workspace.
Where a skill applies
A skill with the Always or When relevant mode applies on its own only where it is in scope. There are four scopes, and a skill can be in more than one.
Whole workspace
Turn on Enable in whole workspace on the skill's page, and it is in scope for every session in the workspace. Use it for rules that hold for all the studio's work.
Project
Add the skill to a project, and it is in scope for every session in that project. Use it for one game, one client or one campaign.
Session board
Place the skill on a session's board, and it is in scope for that session only. Remove it from the board to take it out again; the skill itself is not deleted.
Reference set
Attach the skill to a reference set, and the agent loads it whenever that reference set is used: when you add the set to a prompt, when the session works with it, or when the agent picks the set on its own. Use it for rules that belong to a character, a style or a product line, wherever it appears.
A skill is resolved again on every message, so a skill you add mid-session applies from the next message you send.
Which agents use a skill
Layer's agent hands parts of a job to specialist agents, such as asset generation, playable generation, Spine animation, marketing video, the workflow architect and the game art director. Applies to on the skill's page lists them, and a skill reaches only the ones you tick. New skills apply to all of them. Narrow it when the rules only make sense for one kind of work: a Spine rig naming convention needs only Spine animation.
A skill you run with / applies to whichever agent handles the chat, whatever the skill's targeting.
Seeing a skill at work
The chat shows which skills shaped each reply.
- Preloaded skills at the top of a reply lists the skills that were loaded into it from the start: Always skills in scope, and any skill you ran with
/. - A Loaded skill line means the agent matched a When relevant skill to your request and loaded it.
- A skill you ran with
/also shows as a chip in your own message.
Hover a skill's pill to see why it applied: always on for the workspace, the project, the board or a reference set, or invoked by you.
Skills compared with other ways to steer the agent
A brief
A brief is for one job. A skill is for every job of a kind. If you paste the same paragraph into three briefs, it belongs in a skill. See Write a brief for the agent.
Agent Context
Agent Context, in your account settings, tells the agent about you: your role, your projects, your taste. It is personal. Skills are shared with the workspace and describe how the studio works.
Reference sets
A reference set shows the look in pictures, or trains a model on it. A skill states the rules in words: sizes, naming, composition, what to avoid. They work best together: attach a skill to a reference set so its rules travel with the style. See Reference sets: the source of truth for your art pipeline.
Workflows
A workflow runs fixed steps on a canvas, the same way every time. A skill guides the agent's judgement while it works in chat. Use a workflow when the steps never change, and a skill when the agent still has to decide what to do. See Find and run a workflow.
Who can use skills
The Admin, Editor, Art Director and Artist roles can create, edit and use skills. A custom role needs the View skills permission to use them in chat and Edit skills to change them. See Create a custom role.