Skills (Beta)
Skills are reusable packages of instructions, templates, and tools that teach Glean how to execute specific tasks with domain expertise. Instead of prompting from scratch every time, a Skill captures the structure, decision logic, and know-how behind a task and pairs that knowledge with the tools needed for execution.
General-purpose AI models are powerful but can struggle with domain-specific workflows like account planning, Salesforce analysis, and contract reviews. Skills close this gap by making expertise repeatable, composable, and loaded only when relevant. Skills add zero overhead to queries where they aren't triggered. Your existing experience remains unchanged for non-skill queries.
Skills follow the open Agent Skills standard, adopted by OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, Cursor, and others. This means you can bring skills from the broader ecosystem into Glean and layer in your own organization's ways of working.
Key concepts
Platform Skills
Glean-built Skills that enhance Glean's capabilities out of the box. Platform Skills are maintained by Glean and available to all users in your deployment. Current platform Skills include Salesforce analysis, Jira, Figma, Atlassian, and more.
Personal Skills (My Skills)
Create your own Skills tailored to your workflows. Personal Skills are visible only to you and can be enabled, disabled, edited, or deleted at any time from Settings → Skills.
Automatic Skill routing
Glean automatically evaluates your query against available Skill descriptions and determines whether a Skill is relevant. If it is, Glean loads the relevant portions of the Skill to inform its response. You can also explicitly reference a Skill by name in your prompt. Skill routing works best in thinking mode.
Interoperability
Skills built for Claude, OpenAI, Cursor, and other platforms that follow the Agent Skills standard can be imported directly into Glean.
Getting started
Accessing Skills
Go to Settings → Skills in your Glean instance. You'll see two sections: Your Skills (personal) and Platform Skills (maintained by Glean).
Uploading a Skill
- Click + Add Skill in the top-right corner of the Skills page.
- Choose Upload skill and select a
.zip,.md, or.skillfile. - The Skill appears under Your Skills once uploaded.
If you upload a Skill with the same name as an existing one, Glean prompts you to replace the existing Skill instead of creating a duplicate.
Creating a Skill via chat
You can create Skills directly by chatting with Glean:
- Describe the workflow you want to turn into a Skill. For example, "Create a skill for writing weekly status updates."
- Glean asks clarifying questions about the task, then scaffolds the Skill in canvas.
- Review the generated Skill, make any edits, and save it. The Skill appears under Your Skills in Settings → Skills.
Using a Skill in chat
There are multiple ways to use Skills:
- Automatic: Ask Glean a question related to a Skill's domain. If a relevant Skill exists, Glean automatically loads and uses it. Use thinking mode for best results.
- Explicit: Reference a Skill by name in your prompt (for example, "Use my account planning skill to build a plan for Acme Corp").
- Slash command: Type
/in the composer to see your available Skills and invoke one directly (for example,/my-skill-name).
Managing your Skills
From Settings → Skills, you can:
- Enable/Disable — Toggle Skills on or off.
- Edit — Update Skill instructions at any time.
- Delete — Remove Skills you no longer need.
- Download — Export any Skill as a
.zipfile for portability.
Admin controls
Admins can enable or turn off Skills for their organization through Feature rollouts in the Admin Console.
For details on managing beta features and user access, see Feature rollouts in the Admin console.
Skill file format
A Skill is structured as a folder containing:
- SKILL.md (required): The main instructions file with YAML frontmatter (
nameanddescriptionfields) and natural language instructions. - Additional files (optional): Templates, examples, scripts, and reference materials.
Example use cases
| Use case | Description |
|---|---|
| Account planning | Upload a skill that encodes your organization's account planning best practices. Glean uses it to generate standardized, high-quality account plans grounded in Salesforce, Gong, and internal docs. |
| Meeting prep and follow-up | Create a skill that pulls from your calendar, email, Slack, and CRM to generate meeting prep briefs or draft follow-up emails with the right tone and context. |
| Domain-specific analysis | Teach Glean your team's methodology for financial analysis, legal review, or technical documentation so outputs follow your standards consistently. |
| Knowledge base article creation | Use a skill to standardize how support articles are written, ensuring consistent formatting, tone, and completeness from resolved tickets. |
| Daily briefings | Build a personal skill that synthesizes your calendar, email, Slack, and task list into a morning brief you can reference throughout the day. |
Skills vs. Agents
Skills and Agents are complementary features. Here's how to think about when to use each:
| Skills | Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| What they are | Reusable packages of instructions and expertise for specific tasks | End-to-end workflows triggered by events or schedules |
| When to use | When you want consistent, reusable expertise applied to a task on demand | When you want to automate a full process that runs autonomously |
| Example | A market research skill that applies consistent methodology every time | An agent that runs monthly, builds a market report using a skill, and emails it to leadership |
Skills are foundational building blocks that Agents (and Glean) can invoke. They work together — you don't have to choose one over the other.
Permissions and data access
Skills operate within Glean's existing permission model. Glean will only access data that you have permission to view. No new data access is granted by enabling Skills.
Tips for writing effective Skills
- If a Skill isn't triggering when you expect it to, Skill routing depends on how well the Skill's name and description match the user's query. Try refining the Skill's description to include clearer keywords and, optionally, negative examples (cases where the Skill should not be used).
- Skills work best with advanced reasoning models. We recommend using thinking mode in Glean for the best skill routing and execution quality.
Current limitations
- Skill routing in non-thinking mode — Skill routing works in non-thinking mode, but is most reliable in thinking mode. Use thinking mode for the best routing and execution quality.