Skills

Skills are specialized knowledge modules that Posit Assistant loads automatically when they’re relevant to your request. You don’t need to activate them manually. When you ask a question, the assistant loads any related skills.

Built-in Skills

Skill	Description
`connect-cloud-deploy`	Deploy apps and documents to Posit Connect Cloud
`create-skill`	Create new Agent Skills following the specification
`predictive-modeling-python`	Modeling and machine learning with scikit-learn in Python
`predictive-modeling-r`	Modeling and machine learning with tidymodels in R
`quarto-authoring`	Write and author Quarto documents (.qmd)
`report`	Create Quarto documents or notebooks from conversations
`r-package-development`	R package development with devtools, testthat, and roxygen2
`shiny-bslib`	Build modern Shiny dashboards and apps with bslib
`shiny-bslib-theming`	Advanced theming for Shiny apps using bslib and Bootstrap 5
`snowflake`	Connect to Snowflake and query data via semantic views

Adding Custom Skills

You can add your own skills at two levels:

User-level — ~/.positai/skills/{skill-name}/ — available across all projects
Project-level — .positai/skills/{skill-name}/ — scoped to a single project

Project skills take priority over user skills, and both override built-in skills with the same name.

Skill Directory Structure

my-skill/
├── SKILL.md        # Required: skill definition with metadata
├── scripts/        # Optional: executable scripts (R, Python, Bash)
├── references/     # Optional: additional documentation
└── assets/         # Optional: templates, schemas, data files

SKILL.md Format

Each skill requires a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter:

---
name: my-skill
description: When to use this skill — a clear description that helps the assistant decide when to load it.
---
# My Skill

Instructions, examples, and reference material for the assistant to follow
when this skill is active.

Required fields:

name — Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Must match the directory name. Max 64 characters.
description — Explains when the skill should be used. Max 1024 characters.

Optional fields:

license — Licensing terms (e.g., MIT)
compatibility — Environmental requirements
metadata — Arbitrary key-value pairs (author, version, etc.)

Example

To create a skill for your team’s internal API:

mkdir -p ~/.positai/skills/internal-api

Then create ~/.positai/skills/internal-api/SKILL.md:

---
name: internal-api
description: Use when the user asks about our internal REST API, including authentication, endpoints, and data schemas.
---

# Internal API

Our API is at https://api.example.com/v2.

## Authentication

Use Bearer tokens from the /auth/token endpoint...