Kaiya Skills
With Skills, you teach Kaiya how to reason about your business. Most AI tools answer questions from raw data; Kaiya answers from your domain by combining pre-built domain ontologies and investigation approaches with what you teach it, what your data means, what it has learned over time, and what it remembers about how you work. Skills are the layer you author and control directly: domain ontologies, investigation approaches, and business logic that shape how Kaiya generates SQL, builds charts, writes summaries, and frames analysis.
Skills are applied automatically. You do not invoke a skill manually. Like Memory and Learnings, the relevant skills are applied naturally during a Kaiya conversation, and you can review which ones were applied under the response's thought process dropdown.
How skills fit in: the Domain Reasoning Layer
Skills are one part of Kaiya's Domain Reasoning Layer. The set of context layers that sit behind every briefing and every chat. The overview page presents this as a context graph and a set of four layers that are joined and continuously refining.
A tab bar lets you move between layers: All layers, Skills, Phrase learning, Query learning, and Memory. Below it, four cards summarize each layer, each with a Manage link:
Skills (Taught) Domain ontologies, investigation approaches, and business logic; pre-built with Kaiya, extended by what you teach it about your domain.
Phrase learning (Defined) Phrase-level patterns Kaiya learns from your team's vocabulary — business terms, synonyms, and shorthand mapped to the data model.
Query learning (Confirmed) Query patterns Kaiya has confirmed from your feedback. This includes preferred queries, business rules of thumb, what "good" looks like.
Memory (Compounding) Compounding context Kaiya carries across sessions. This is the longest-tail layer, which gets richer the more your team uses the system.
Skill management is role-based: Super users and admin users can add and edit skills.
The Skills page
Selecting Skills opens the Skills list, where you create, find, filter, enable, and edit skills.
Search: find a skill by name.
Add Custom Skill: open the dialog to create a new custom skill.
Sorting: sort the list based on recency and creation date
Status: filter by status - active and archived Skills
Reset: clears the sorting and status selections back to their defaults.
Custom Skill and Domain Skill tabs
Below the controls are two sub-tabs that switch between the two skill types:
Custom Skill: individual skills you author.
Domain Skill: skills scoped to a domain / Business View that group custom skills together.
The skills table
On the Custom Skill tab, skills are listed in a table with these columns:
Custom Skill — the skill name (for example, pending-financing-active-order-exclusion).
Description — the human-readable summary of when the skill applies (truncated in the table).
Label — the routing tag(s) applied to the skill, shown as a colored tag (for example,
sql,sql_editor,sql_reflection,sql_editor_reflection,highcharts).Status — an enable/disable toggle. In the example, the top row is toggled off and the rest are on.
Updated — the date and time the skill was last changed (for example, 01 Jun 2026, 05:28 PM).
⋮ (kebab menu) — a three-dot actions menu at the end of each row.
Custom Skills
A Custom Skill is an individual skill you define — a name, a description, the skill instructions, and one or more labels. Custom skills are per-user customizations and carry the highest precedence at runtime, overriding domain and behavioural layers when more than one applies (see How skills are organized and prioritized).
Anatomy of a custom skill
Each custom skill has the following fields:
Skill Name — a short name for the skill.
Skill Description — a human-readable summary of when and why the skill applies. The description is also used to route the skill to the relevant Kaiya engine paths, so it should clearly state when the skill should and should not be used.
Skill (the skill definition) — the actual instructions the engine will execute when the skill applies. As the dialog states, "This is the actual skill definition — the instructions the engine will execute." It accepts free-form text (for example, data-dictionary rules, formatting style guides, or domain rule sets, including statements such as "Does NOT fire on:" followed by exclusions).
Labels — one or more routing tags applied to the skill (see Labels).
Status — a toggle to enable or disable the skill without deleting it (set from the Status column in the list).
Skill type — Custom Skill or Domain Skill. The type is chosen at creation and, as the edit dialog states, "Skill type cannot be changed after creation."
Creating a custom skill
On the Skills page, click Add Custom Skill. The Add Custom Skill dialog opens with the description "Define a new skill to shape your analytics workflow."
Figure 3 — The Add Custom Skill dialog (Image 6).Enter a Skill Name (placeholder: "A short, one-line summary of this skill").
Enter a Skill Description (placeholder: "A short, one-line summary of this skill").
In the Skill box, write the skill definition — the logic, steps, or instructions the system should follow when this skill is invoked (placeholder: "Define the skill — write out the logic, steps, or instructions the system should follow when this skill is invoked…"). You can type or paste the content directly into this box.
Set Labels. A new skill defaults to the Default label, shown as a removable chip (Default ×); use the dropdown to change or add labels.
Click Create Skill to save, or Cancel to discard. Use the ✕ in the top-right corner to close the dialog.
Note: Skills are entered manually in this dialog. You can copy and paste text into the Skill box, but bulk-uploading skills from a file is not available in this build.
Note: There is no automated "refine" or validation step that checks a skill's definition in this build. The skill you enter is saved and used as written.
Editing a custom skill
Opening an existing custom skill launches the Edit Custom Skill dialog, headed "Update this skill's configuration."
Figure 4 — The Edit Custom Skill dialog (Image 3).
A banner at the top shows the skill type — Custom Skill — with the reminder "Skill type cannot be changed after creation."
The skill name appears in the first field (for example, pending-financing-active-order-exclusion).
Skill Description holds the routing summary (for example, "For cancellation-rate, order-pipeline, cohort-retention metrics, exclude orders with CREDIT_APP_STATUS='Pending' for >14d from denominator/Active counts…").
Skill holds the definition the engine executes (for example, a "Does NOT fire on:" rule set listing the cases where the skill should not apply). The helper text confirms: "This is the actual skill definition — the instructions the engine will execute."
Labels shows the current label chips and a dropdown to change them.
Click Save Changes to apply, or Cancel to discard. Use the ✕ to close.
Labels
The Labels field is a multi-select that tags the skill. It controls how the skill is routed within Kaiya. Click the field to open the dropdown and select one or more labels using the checkboxes; selected labels appear as removable chips, and the × chip clears the selection.
Figure 5 — The Labels multi-select dropdown (Images 4 and 5).
In the current build, the Labels dropdown offers these options:
Simple Analysis
Chart Generation
Summary Generation
PPT Export
PDF Export
DOCX Export
Deep Analysis
Deep Summary
Default
Important: There are two different label sets in evidence, and they do not match. In an engineering walkthrough, the Label dropdown contained the routing labels in the reference table below (SQL, SQL Editor, SQL Reflection, SQL Editor Reflection, Highcharts, Chart Config, Narration), and existing skills in the list still display these values (for example,
sql,sql_editor,sql_reflection,sql_editor_reflection,highcharts). The current screenshots, however, show a different dropdown — analysis- and export-type options (Simple Analysis, Chart Generation, Summary Generation, PPT Export, PDF Export, DOCX Export, Deep Analysis, Deep Summary, Default). Confirm with the product/engineering team which set is authoritative for this release, and whether the routing-label reference table below still applies, before publishing.
Reference: what the routing labels control
The following routing labels determine which Kaiya engine path a skill applies to:
Default
Applies when no more specific routing label is set.
SQL
SQL generation for standard textual queries. Also the routing label for Deep Insights analytical framing.
SQL Editor
Semantic-cache queries — the fast path that returns within 3–5 seconds after the original query has been configured.
SQL Reflection
Reflection logic applied to textual SQL queries.
SQL Editor Reflection
Reflection logic applied to semantic-cache queries.
Highcharts
Chart selection and formatting via the Highcharts rendering library.
Chart Config
Legacy chart configuration. Slated for deprecation.
Narration
How chart titles, summaries, and result narratives are written.
PPTX formatting and structure
Slide layouts, section ordering, and chart-on-slide conventions. Not yet implemented for user skills in this build.
Domain Skills
A Domain Skill encodes vertical or Business-View-specific behavior and is scoped to a Business View. Rather than holding its own engine-routing label, a domain skill groups one or more Custom Skills together through a "Linked Custom Skills" field. Domain skills sit below custom (user) skills in precedence and above the behavioural layer.
To work with domain skills, select the Domain Skill sub-tab on the Skills page.
Editing a domain skill
Opening a domain skill launches the Edit Domain Skill dialog, headed "Update this skill's configuration."
Figure 6 — The Edit Domain Skill dialog (Image 7).
A banner shows the skill type — Domain Skill — with the reminder "Skill type cannot be changed after creation."
Skill Name — the name of the domain skill (for example, jkj).
Skill Description — a human-readable summary (for example, hh).
Linked Custom Skills (with an ⓘ info icon) — the custom skills attached to this domain skill, shown as removable chips (for example, dsdsd ×, TEst ×).
Click Save Changes to apply, or Cancel to discard. Use the ✕ to close.
Linking custom skills
Click the Linked Custom Skills field to open its dropdown and attach custom skills to the domain skill.
Figure 7 — The Linked Custom Skills dropdown (Image 8).
A Search box at the top lets you find a custom skill by name.
Each custom skill is listed with a checkbox (for example, dsds, pending-financing-active-order-exclusion, test, Test, dsdd, dsdsd). Selected skills are checked and appear as chips above the field.
Remove a linked skill by clicking the × on its chip.
Note: The difference between the two skill types in short — a Custom Skill is a single, self-contained skill with its own definition and routing label(s); a Domain Skill is a Business-View-scoped container that links one or more custom skills so they apply together for that domain.
How skills are organized and prioritized
Skills operate within a layered model that determines default behavior and resolves conflicts when more than one instruction applies. From foundational to most specific:
Layer 1a — System Prompt · Implementation
Defines core tool calls and platform functionality. The foundational layer that ensures Kaiya operates correctly across the platform. (Hardcoded; not user-editable.)
Layer 1b — System Prompt · Behavioural
Defines default Kaiya behavior across the platform. Can be tuned by super users when platform-wide behavior needs adjustment.
Layer 2 — Domain skills
Encodes vertical or Business-View-specific behavior. Scoped to a Business View.
Layer 3 — User skills (Custom Skills)
Per-user customizations. Overrides domain and behavioural layers at runtime when more than one applies.
Precedence: Custom (User) skills override Domain skills, which override the Behavioural layer:
Custom skill › Domain skill › Behavioural layer
So when a custom skill and a domain skill both apply to the same query, the custom skill wins.
Enabling and disabling skills
Each skill has a Status toggle in the Skills list. Turning a skill off disables it without deleting it, so you can keep it configured and re-enable it later. Use the Status filter (default All Status) at the top of the list to show only enabled or disabled skills.
You do not select or invoke a skill when you chat with Kaiya — there is no command, slash, or keyboard shortcut to call one manually. Enabled skills are matched and applied automatically, based on each skill's description and label routing, the same way Memory, Phrase learning, and Query learning are applied. To see which skills (and other context) were applied in a given answer, open the thought process dropdown on that Kaiya response.
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