Skills Overview

Skills are how you teach Pioneer reusable behavior. Without a skill, you repeat the same instructions in prompts: how your repo is organized, how a report should be formatted, which checks matter, which commands are safe, which output shape you expect. A skill packages that knowledge so it can be installed, reviewed, enabled, disabled, and reused. A skill can be small, like a writing style guide. It can also be more capable, with dependency checks and dynamic tools. Either way, treat it as part of the gateway’s working environment. Pioneer skills are compatible with the Agent Skills specification. In practice, that means a skill follows the open Agent Skills format built around a SKILL.md file plus optional scripts, references, assets, and supporting resources.

​

When Skills Help

Use a skill when the same behavior should show up again and again. A team might use a skill for repository conventions or support workflows. A researcher might use one for literature notes. A company might package an internal API helper. A solo user might create a skill for how they want documents summarized. If the instruction is one-off, put it in the thread. If it should become part of how Pioneer works in a workspace, make it a skill.

​

Where Skills Live

Skills are installed for the current workspace on a gateway. That means your work workspace can have approved work skills, your personal workspace can have personal skills, and your sandbox workspace can be where you test new or untrusted packages. Use a separate gateway when the skill should run on a different machine or security boundary.

​

Enabled And Implicit Skills

Installed skills can be enabled or disabled. A disabled skill stays installed on the gateway, but agents should not use it. Enabled skills can be implicit or not implicit. An implicit skill is available automatically when Pioneer decides it is relevant. A not implicit skill is available only when you explicitly ask for it, either by selecting it in the composer or by naming it in your prompt. Newly installed skills start not implicit by default. Use implicit mode only for trusted, general-purpose behavior that should naturally apply in many threads. Use not implicit mode for specialized, risky, noisy, or rarely needed skills.

​

Selecting Skills In A Thread

In the desktop composer, use the add button and choose Add skills to attach one or more skills to the next turn. Selected skills appear as attachment chips above the input, not as inline text inside the message. After you send the turn, the same chips appear on the user message in the timeline. A selected skill is sent to the gateway as a turn capability. Pioneer resolves it as an explicit composer capability for that turn, applies normal policy and validation, and reports diagnostics if the skill is missing, disabled, blocked, or unavailable. Composer-selected skills do not paste the full SKILL.md body into the prompt. The prompt gets a compact skill entry with the exact read_skill slug and description; the full instructions remain available through read_skill.

​

Using Skills Safely

Installing a skill should not be treated like pasting a harmless prompt. Skills can include dynamic tools, dependency expectations, and workflow instructions that affect what agents do. Before trusting a skill, look at what it adds, what commands or services it expects, and whether it asks for broad file or network access. Then try it with a low-risk prompt before using it on important work.

​

Typical Flow

Install the skill, review validation results, fix missing dependencies if needed, confirm it is enabled in the current workspace, keep it not implicit unless there is a reason to change that, and try it in a thread by selecting it from the composer. If it behaves well and is broadly useful, consider making it implicit. If it is too broad or surprising, disable it or keep it explicit-only.