Enable built-in document skills and inspect the instructions your Agent uses for specialized work.
Skills give your Agent reusable instructions for specialized work. Every Agent includes four built-in skills from HeroUI: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX. Each is enabled by default and can be controlled independently in Configure → Skills.
| Skill | Specialized work |
|---|---|
| Reports, briefs, one-pagers, and custom page layouts | |
| DOCX | Letters, proposals, memos, and editable documents |
| PPTX | Slide narratives, presentations, and custom deck layouts |
| XLSX | Workbooks with derived columns, totals, and multiple sheets |
Open a skill to read its overview, current version, and SKILL.md instructions. The Contents tab offers a rendered preview and the original source. Built-in contents are read-only and automatically follow HeroUI's current revision.
Disabling one skill removes its specialized instructions and bespoke rendering capability. Basic exports remain available. For example, disabling PDF still permits a standard PDF export through generateFile, but removes the PDF guide and custom PDF rendering through renderDocument. CSV, JSON, and Markdown are basic export formats, not separate skills.
Changes apply to the next accepted message. An active response keeps the skill configuration and revisions it started with. The Agent receives a short catalog of available skills and reads the full guide through readSkill only when needed.
Choose Try in chat from a skill's menu to open the Agent's live preview. This opens the preview without sending a message. Ask for a document that needs the skill's specialized work, then inspect the tool activity and resulting file.
Skills use the same public management contract as the dashboard:
GET /v1/agents/{agentId}/skills lists skills and their state.GET /v1/agents/{agentId}/skills/{skillId} includes the read-only contents.PATCH /v1/agents/{agentId}/skills/{skillId} accepts { "enabled": false } to change one preference.Reads require agents:read; changes require agents:write. Responses distinguish enabled, the saved preference, from available, whether the built-in is supported by the runtime. Full Agent definitions also include configuration.skills, so the settings travel with exported or copied configurations.
Built-in skills cannot be uploaded, duplicated, removed, or pinned to an older version.