Skills

A skill is a markdown file that an Automation User, RevOps Admin, or organization admin adds to GTM Engine so Genie agents can search and read reusable guidance. Skills are best for long-lived context that should shape how agents reason, answer, or draft work across conversations.

Skills live in Settings → Skills at /settings/skills.

What to use skills for

Use skills for guidance that is reusable and specific to your business:

• Company memory: what your company does, who you sell to, how you position the product, and common customer language.
• Sales methodology: qualification criteria, discovery structure, objection handling, mutual action plan rules, or handoff standards.
• Brand and content guidance: voice, terminology, colors, fonts, logo usage notes, and examples of copy that should or should not be used.
• ROI and business-case logic: how your team thinks about value, payback, risk, assumptions, and economic buyers.
• Internal process rules: when to escalate, which fields matter, how to summarize accounts, or how to prepare for a meeting.
• Onboarding notes: operating context new teammates need Genie to follow consistently.

Recommended starter skills include:

• Brand Kit: positioning, approved language, voice, colors, fonts, logo usage, and messaging do/don'ts.
• Writing Style: editorial rules for emails, content, summaries, and executive-facing updates.
• ROI Guidance: value drivers, discovery questions, assumptions, and business-case structure.
• Pricing Guidance: packaging, discounting rules, approval paths, and pricing objection handling.
• Sales Process Documentation: detailed stage definitions, exit criteria, methodology, and coaching guidance.
• Legal Process: contract review workflow, red flags, fallback positions, and escalation rules.

Do not use skills for:

• Secrets, credentials, private tokens, or anything that should never be sent to an AI model.
• Transient deal facts such as a single opportunity's next step or close date.
• Data that already belongs in CRM records, product settings, fields, workflows, or integrations.
• Arbitrary executable code. Skills are markdown guidance and retrieval context, not code execution.

Manual skills

Manual skills are uploaded or edited by an Admin or RevOps user.

When you upload a markdown file, GTM Engine stores the markdown and automatically generates retrieval metadata such as:

• Title and description
• Summary
• Tags
• Use cases
• Scope hints
• Search phrases
• Named entities

You can edit the markdown directly in the Skills page, upload a replacement markdown file, and regenerate metadata.

Manual skills are not silently changed by agents after a conversation.

Auto-managed skills

Auto-managed skills are explicitly marked as automated and set to update after turns. After an agent conversation, GTM Engine checks only those eligible skills for durable reusable facts that should be preserved.

The updater skips one-off requests, transient deal facts, secrets, and guesses. When it does update a skill, it updates the stored markdown. Manual uploaded skills remain protected.

Use auto-managed skills for slowly evolving memory, such as durable user or organization preferences. Use manual skills for curated operating guidance that admins want to control directly.

Account skills

Account skills are auto-managed markdown skills for a specific Account. GTM Engine creates and updates an account skill file for each customer or prospect your team has engaged with. These files summarize durable account intelligence from associated calls and emails, such as:

• Account priorities and active projects
• Procurement timing and buying process
• Key people and stakeholder roles
• Security or legal process details
• Tech stack notes
• Account-level open questions the team should resolve across future opportunities

Account skills are different from org-wide skills:

• Org-wide skills live in Settings → Skills and apply broadly across the organization.
• Generated account skills live only on the Account page for that account. They do not appear in the normal skill file list in Settings → Skills.

Settings includes a dedicated Account Skill Template tab next to the normal skill file list. Users with agent skill management access can edit this single template to define the sections GTM Engine should maintain for every generated account skill. The template is labeled Automated and Auto from activity because generated account skills are refreshed from associated calls and emails, not from ordinary manual edits.

Use the template for durable account knowledge categories you want every generated account skill to track, such as priorities, projects, buying process, procurement, security review, legal review, key people, tech stack, risks, and account-level open questions. Avoid putting one specific account’s facts in the template; those belong in the generated account skill on that Account page.

GTM Engine updates account skills automatically when new calls or emails are associated with the account. The updater compares the existing account skill file with the new transcript or email evidence, preserves still-valid information, and only changes the file when the evidence adds or corrects durable account knowledge. Many routine emails do not update the skill at all.

Users with agent skill management access can also queue a manual regeneration from the Account page. Manual regeneration/backfill can use related opportunity information plus historical email and meeting data, capped to roughly 500,000 tokens of source context, to generate the first pass of an account skill file.

Workflows and agents with account context can inject the current account skill with:

{{ system.account_skill.content_markdown }}

Related fields are also available:

• {{ system.account_skill.title }}
• {{ system.account_skill.description }}
• {{ system.account_skill.updated_at }}

Use the account skill variable in AI steps when the prompt needs the latest account-specific relationship context, procurement context, priorities, or open questions. If a workflow is not running with an account context, these variables resolve to an empty value.

How agents use skills

Agents do not receive every skill body in their prompt. Instead, they receive a compact index and can use two tools:

• search_skills finds relevant skill files from generated metadata and keyword matching.
• read_skill retrieves the full markdown for the specific skill the agent needs.

This keeps context focused and helps agents use the right guidance only when it applies.

Large skills may be truncated when an agent reads them. If a topic grows long, split it into smaller focused skill files so agents can retrieve the exact guidance they need.

Skill authoring guide

Good skills are concise, easy to discover, and tested against real requests. Treat a skill like reusable onboarding material for Genie: it should contain the durable guidance your team would otherwise repeat in chat.

Recommended structure

Most skills work well with this structure:

# [Skill name]

## When to use this skill
[Describe the user request, workflow, page, or business situation where Genie should use it.]

## Guidance
[Specific company rules, heuristics, defaults, and operating principles.]

## Examples
[Input/output examples, preferred phrasing, or realistic scenarios.]

## When not to use this skill
[Boundaries, exceptions, and cases where another source of truth is better.]

You do not need YAML frontmatter in GTM Engine skill files. Use the title and description fields in the Skills page for discovery; GTM Engine also generates retrieval metadata from the markdown.

Keep skills concise

Genie only reads the full skill when it appears relevant, but once it is read, every word competes with conversation history and other context. Assume Genie already understands general business concepts. Add the company-specific guidance it would not know otherwise.

Good:

## Pricing approval

Discounts above 15% require VP Sales approval. Multi-year contracts can trade a higher discount for upfront payment.

Avoid:

## Pricing approval

Pricing is an important part of sales. Discounts are reductions from list price. Sales teams often use discounts to help customers buy software...

Ask of each paragraph: “Does Genie need this to behave differently for our company?” If not, remove it.

Write discovery-friendly titles and descriptions

Titles and descriptions help Genie decide whether to use a skill. Make them specific and use the words your team will naturally use.

Good titles:

• Pricing Guidance
• Legal Process
• Enterprise Sales Process
• Writing Style
• ROI Guidance

Avoid vague titles:

• Helper
• Misc Notes
• Documents
• Sales Stuff

Descriptions should be written in third person and include both what the skill does and when to use it.

Good:

Guides ROI analysis, payback assumptions, and business-case framing. Use when building value hypotheses, mutual action plans, or executive summaries.

Avoid:

I can help you with business stuff.

Match guidance strictness to the task

Different workflows need different levels of freedom. Give Genie room to adapt when judgment matters, but be explicit when mistakes are costly.

• High freedom: use principles and heuristics when many approaches are valid. Examples: writing style, brand tone, call coaching, content review.
• Medium freedom: provide templates or default frameworks when a preferred pattern exists. Examples: ROI analysis, business-case structure, discovery workflow.
• Low freedom: provide exact rules or ordered steps when consistency is critical. Examples: legal escalation, discount approval, procurement steps, compliance processes.

Example low-freedom guidance:

## Discount approvals

- Up to 10%: AE can approve.
- 10–20%: Sales manager approval required.
- Above 20%: VP Sales approval required.
- Never offer custom payment terms without Finance approval.

Example high-freedom guidance:

## Executive writing style

Lead with the business outcome, then the evidence. Prefer short paragraphs and avoid internal jargon. Adapt the level of detail to the recipient's role.

Use examples for subjective work

Examples help Genie match your preferred style more reliably than abstract rules alone. Include examples when output quality depends on tone, format, or judgment.

## Renewal risk summary style

Good:
“Renewal risk is elevated because the customer has not adopted reporting workflows and the economic buyer has not joined the last two meetings.”

Avoid:
“This account might churn because usage seems low.”

For structured outputs, include a reusable template:

## Business case format

Use this structure unless the user asks for another format:

1. Current state
2. Cost of inaction
3. Expected improvement
4. Financial impact
5. Assumptions
6. Open questions

Add workflow loops for high-stakes tasks

For complex or quality-sensitive work, tell Genie how to check its own work before finalizing.

## Proposal review loop

1. Draft the proposal.
2. Check terminology against the approved messaging list.
3. Flag unsupported claims.
4. Verify each claim is supported by CRM notes, call transcripts, or approved collateral.
5. Revise until every required section is present.

This pattern is useful for legal reviews, business cases, proposal writing, executive summaries, and process audits.

Use conditional workflows for branching processes

If the right process depends on the situation, make the decision point explicit.

## Legal review workflow

1. Determine request type:

   **Customer redlines?** Follow the redline workflow.
   **Security questionnaire?** Follow the security workflow.
   **Non-standard payment terms?** Escalate to Finance before responding.

2. Redline workflow:
   - Identify changes to liability, indemnity, data processing, and termination.
   - Accept low-risk wording changes.
   - Escalate any liability cap change.

3. Security workflow:
   - Use the approved security FAQ.
   - Do not invent compliance claims.
   - Escalate unanswered questions to Security.

Split large skills by topic

Large skills are harder to retrieve and may be truncated when an agent reads them. Split broad handbooks into focused skills.

Instead of one large Sales Handbook, create:

• Sales Process Documentation
• Pricing Guidance
• Legal Process
• ROI Guidance
• Competitive Positioning

Focused skills help Genie find the right guidance and avoid loading unrelated context.

Keep references shallow

GTM Engine skills are markdown files, not executable skill directories. If you need to include references, keep them directly in the skill or split them into separate skills with clear titles. Avoid chains like “see another doc, which links to another doc,” because it makes retrieval less reliable.

Avoid stale or sensitive content

Do not include:

• Secrets, credentials, private tokens, or API keys
• Content that should never be sent to an AI model
• One-off deal facts that belong in CRM
• Time-sensitive instructions that will quietly become wrong

If historical context is useful, keep current guidance first and add an “Old patterns” or “Deprecated guidance” section below it.

Test and iterate

The best skill files improve through real use:

1. Try a representative request without the skill and note what Genie misses.
2. Write the smallest skill that fixes that gap.
3. Test again with a fresh Genie conversation.
4. Watch whether Genie finds the skill, follows the guidance, and avoids overusing it.
5. Edit the title, description, examples, or boundaries based on what you observe.

Good test scenarios:

• “Draft an executive business case for this opportunity.”
• “Review this deal and identify missing MEDDIC evidence.”
• “Write a pricing objection response for procurement.”
• “Summarize renewal risk using our preferred customer-success language.”

Checklist before sharing a skill

Before creating or publishing a skill, check:

• Description is specific and written in third person.
• “When to use this skill” is clear.
• The body is concise and company-specific.
• Guidance uses consistent terminology.
• Examples are concrete and realistic.
• Fragile workflows include exact steps or escalation rules.
• Subjective workflows include examples or templates.
• Boundaries are clear in “When not to use this skill.”
• No secrets, credentials, transient deal facts, or stale time-sensitive instructions.
• Long content is split into multiple focused skills.