> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.tellius.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.tellius.com/tellius-6.4/kaiya/kaiya-skills.md).

# Kaiya Skills

With Skills, you teach Kaiya how to reason about *your* business. 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.

{% hint style="info" %}
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. To see which ones were applied, open **How Kaiya got this** on the answer. A **Using your skill** step names the custom skill that was applied. Kaiya's built-in guidance shows only when **Detailed view** is on. See [How Kaiya got this](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-conversational-ai/kaiya-responses#how-kaiya-got-this).
{% endhint %}

### 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.

<figure><img src="https://content.gitbook.com/content/C5PhRxmOjkQZJEO6F9Zw/blobs/O1EsX42syelDvfzUbIMV/image.png" alt="" width="563"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

A tab bar lets you move between the views of the Kaiya Context page: **All layers**, **Skills** and **Memory**. A read-only **Legacy learnings** tab also appears while phrase or query learnings remain outside Memory. The **All layers** view shows a card for each of the two layers, with its counts and a **Manage** link:

* **Skills** *(Layer 1, Taught)* Domain ontologies, investigation approaches, and business logic; pre-built with Kaiya, extended by what you teach it about your domain. Select **Manage skills** to open them.
* **Memory** *(Layer 2, Compounding)* Rules, knowledge and instructions Kaiya carries across sessions, including your team's vocabulary. It gets richer the more your team uses the system. Select **Manage memory** to open it.

Below the cards, the **Moving phrase learnings to Memory** panel shows how many phrase learnings have moved to Memory and how many remain. Phrase learnings that have not moved keep working as before. See [Kaiya's persistent memory](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiyas-persistent-memory).

The panel shows a status, such as **Completed** or **Did not finish**, and a progress bar with the count moved. It also offers **Retry move**, **View unmoved phrases** and **Support details**.

* **Retry move** tries the move again.
* **Support details** lists the **Last attempt**, **Attempts**, **Reason** and **Reference**, with **Copy details** and **Contact support**. Select **Copy details** to copy these details so you can send them to support.

{% hint style="success" %}
When skills overlap, the precedence order is: **Custom skills > Domain skills > Behavioural Layer > Implementation Layer.** User-level customizations always win over broader defaults; the Implementation Layer (which defines core tool calls and platform functionality) sits at the foundation and is not overridden through user or domain skills.
{% endhint %}

### **What custom skills shape**

A custom skill applies to everything Kaiya does: answering questions, Deep Insights, exports, Business Views, Missions and Apps. You write a skill once, and Kaiya follows it in every conversation without the instruction being repeated. Teams use custom skills to:

* **Set tone and audience.** For example, *"Write for business users. Keep it short and leave out technical detail."*
* **Fix a house report format.** For example, an executive summary first, then the findings, then next steps.
* **Add a domain playbook.** For example, *"When TRx drops, check payer mix, then territory, then top HCPs."*
* **Decide how Kaiya handles ambiguity.** Ask Kaiya to always ask clarifying questions before it assumes, or to proceed on stated assumptions and let you iterate.
* **Tune or replace a default.** For example, replace the default Deep Insights skill with your own approach.

Where a custom skill and Kaiya's default behavior differ, the custom skill takes priority. A custom skill is either **Global**, used in every user's sessions, or **User**, used only in the sessions of the person who created it. See [How to create a new Skill](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/how-to-create-a-new-skill).

In Tellius 6.4, you can also create and manage skills without leaving Kaiya chat. Send a short request such as `/skill` to create one step by step, or `/skills` to list your skills and change them. Kaiya reads these like any other message, and plain words work the same way. There is no command menu. See [Managing skills in the conversation](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/managing-skills-in-the-conversation).

{% hint style="info" %}
**Skill or memory?** Use a skill to set how Kaiya works, such as the tone, the report format or the steps to follow when a metric drops. Use a memory to set what a term means or which metric to use, such as "revenue means net revenue". A memory can also be tied to one Business View when the rule applies only there.
{% endhint %}

### **Inside the Skills layer: four context layers**

{% hint style="info" %}
In Tellius 6.4, the **Context layers** panel lists **Unified Chat Skills**, **Business View Context**, **Domain Skill** and **Custom Skill**, plus **Personalization**. Unified Chat Skills are the built-in skills the unified chat uses, and they are read-only. Personalization holds how you like Kaiya to answer: your defaults, units and depth. The **System Prompt** entries below describe earlier releases. See [How to create a new Skill](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/how-to-create-a-new-skill).
{% endhint %}

When you open the **Skills** tab, the left **Context Layers** panel shows the four layers that feed Kaiya's reasoning for a request, from the foundational platform instructions through to your tenant's own skills:

* **System Prompt.** The base instructions Kaiya uses when planning and summarizing. It is read-only reference, and it is split into two sub-layers: the **Implementation Layer** (the core tool calls and platform functionality that make Kaiya operate correctly across the platform) and the **Behavioural Layer** (Kaiya's default behaviour, which super users can tune when platform-wide behaviour needs adjusting).
* **Business View Context.** The schema, grain, and vocabulary passed to Kaiya with the active Business View. It is set by the workspace and is read-only here.
* **Domain Skill.** Industry-specific rules and defaults, curated by Tellius and shipped with the platform (described below).
* **Custom Skill.** Your tenant's own skills, authored from the specific requirements of your deployment (described below).

### **Domain Skills vs Custom Skills**

The difference is who owns them, who can edit them, and how they are structured.

**Domain Skills** are curated by Tellius and ship with the platform. They hold industry-specific rules and sensible defaults for a vertical. A Domain Skill is organized into one or more **sections**, where each section has its own description and detail and teaches Kaiya one distinct thing. For example, one section for how to run a particular analysis and another for how to summarize the result. Domain Skills are editable by **super users only**. Other users don't see domain skills. In Tellius 6.4, super users can also create, change and delete domain skills in Kaiya chat. See [Managing skills in the conversation](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/managing-skills-in-the-conversation).

{% hint style="info" %}
**Link a Business View to a domain skill.** You make the link from the Business View, not from the skill. Go to **Data → Business View**, open the Business View's three-dot menu and select **Edit**. In **Edit Business View**, turn on **Show Advanced Settings**, then choose the skill under **Assign Domain Skill**. You can pick **None** or one live domain skill. The link gives that Business View the skill's specialized analytics. The domain skill itself has no Business View field. See [Editing a Business View](https://help.tellius.com/data/preparing-your-business-views/editing-a-business-view).
{% endhint %}

**Custom Skills** are created by your own organization, based on the specific requirements of your deployment (your vocabulary, preferences, and business rules). A Custom Skill is authored directly in the tenant. Once published, a **Global** custom skill applies to every user in the tenant, and a **User** custom skill applies only to the person who created it. A Custom Skill carries a description, a detail body, and one or more routing labels (described below).

{% hint style="warning" %}
A skill's layer (Domain or Custom) is chosen when it is created and cannot be changed afterward. Each skill also has a **Status** control, so it can be enabled or disabled without being deleted.
{% endhint %}

### **Anatomy of a Custom Skill**

* **Skill name.** A name for the skill.
* **Description.** A short, human-readable summary of when and why the skill applies. The description is what routes the skill to the relevant Kaiya engine paths. In the Tellius 6.4 conversation, Kaiya sees each skill's name and description at the start of every turn, and loads a skill only when the question matches its description. Start the description with "Use when…" and name the words, abbreviations and column names people type.
* **Detail.** The skill definition itself — the instructions the engine executes. Accepts markdown.
* **Labels.** One or more technical routing tags that determine which Kaiya engine path the skill applies to. In Tellius 6.4, labels matter only for Mission exports (see the hint below).
* **Status.** A toggle to enable or disable the skill without deleting it.

### **What each Label controls:**

{% hint style="info" %}
**Labels in Tellius 6.4.** In Kaiya chat, Kaiya loads a custom skill from its name and description only. Labels no longer decide which step a skill applies to. There is one exception: when a Mission's export step takes images or logos from custom skills, it uses only the skills labelled for that format (**PPT Export**, **DOCX Export** or **PDF Export**) or labelled **Default**. A skill without a label counts as **Default**. So if a Mission export should pick up your logo, label that skill for the format, or leave it on Default.
{% endhint %}

In releases before Tellius 6.4, each label shaped one step:

| Label              | What it shapes                                                                   |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Simple Analysis    | The standard, single-step analysis path, including the SQL Kaiya writes.         |
| Chart Generation   | How Kaiya builds charts.                                                         |
| Summary Generation | How Kaiya writes the summary of a result.                                        |
| PPT Export         | PowerPoint exports.                                                              |
| PDF Export         | PDF exports.                                                                     |
| DOCX Export        | Word exports.                                                                    |
| Deep Analysis      | The multi-step Deep Insight analysis.                                            |
| Deep Summary       | The summary of a Deep Insight.                                                   |
| Self-review        | Kaiya's self-review step.                                                        |
| Insight App        | Building Kaiya Apps.                                                             |
| Kaiya Architect    | Kaiya Architect, which builds Business Views in the conversation.                |
| Default            | Every step, rather than one specific step. A skill without a label uses Default. |

PPT, PDF and DOCX Export are three separate labels. In Tellius 6.4, the skill form doesn't show a label field. A new custom skill starts with **Default**, and Kaiya assigns labels on its own after the skill is created. To change them, open the skill and select the label icon beside **Copy**, at the top of the **Skill content** box. Its tooltip shows how many labels the skill has, such as **1 label**. In the **Labels** dialog, choose labels from the list in the table above, then select **Done**, or **Cancel** to keep them as they were. See [How to create a new Skill](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/how-to-create-a-new-skill).

### **How skills are layered and prioritized**

A single request can match more than one layer at once. The layers resolve from the foundational platform instructions through to your tenant's own skills:

**What each layer does:**

| **Layer**                                | **What it does**                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Layer 1a: System Prompt - Implementation | Defines core tool calls and platform functionality. The foundational layer that ensures Kaiya operates correctly across the platform.                                                                                                     |
| Layer 1b: System Prompt - Behavioural    | Defines default Kaiya behavior across the platform. In Tellius 6.4, it is read-only and shown under **Unified Chat Skills**.                                                                                                              |
| Layer 2: Domain skills                   | Encodes industry-specific rules and defaults, curated by Tellius. A Business View can be linked to a domain skill.                                                                                                                        |
| Layer 3: Custom skills                   | Your tenant's own skills, at two levels. A Global skill applies to every user's sessions, and a User skill applies only to the sessions of the person who created it. Overrides domain and behavioural layers at runtime when both apply. |

When more than one applies, a loaded **Custom Skill overrides the Behavioural Layer**, and a Custom Skill takes precedence over a Domain Skill where both apply. The Implementation Layer sits at the foundation and is never overridden by a skill.

In the Tellius 6.4 conversation, what you ask in the conversation itself comes first, then your organization's skills, then Kaiya's built-in defaults. Where a User skill and a Global skill disagree, the User skill wins for that user.

### **Who can manage skills**

Skill management depends on the access your role gives to the **Context** module. See [Custom roles](https://help.tellius.com/settings/users-and-access/custom-roles).

* **Full Access to Context.** You can create, edit and delete your own **User** skills. You can't create **Global** skills or edit them. The built-in **Power** role has Full Access to Context. To check what a role gives, open it under **Settings → Workspace → Users & Access → Roles**.
* **Admins, Content Admins and Super Users.** These roles, and custom roles with Full Access to **Manage workspace** or with **Content management** access, can create and edit **Global** skills, promote a User skill to Global, and manage every user's skills.
* **Domain Skills.** Only Super Users can create or change them. Other users don't see them.
* **Read Access to Context.** You can see the skills, but you can't add or edit them.
* **In Kaiya chat.** The same access applies when you manage skills in the conversation. Only skill admins can promote a User skill to Global or make a Global skill personal again. Skill admins are Super Users, Admins and Content Admins, and custom roles with Full Access to **Manage workspace** or any access to **Content management**. Everyone else manages only their own User skills. See [Managing skills in the conversation](https://help.tellius.com/kaiya/kaiya-skills/managing-skills-in-the-conversation).


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