Skills are reusable instruction sets that define how the AI behaves in Productive. You write the instructions once, save them as a skill, and apply them whenever you need consistent, predictable output: in the AI Assistant or through an agent.
Think of a skill as a saved behavioral profile: it tells the AI what to do, how to respond, and what rules to follow.
Skills are available on the Professional and Ultimate subscription plans.
When to Use Skills
Skills work best for tasks that are repeatable, consistent, or context-specific.
Repeatable: you or your team runs the same workflow regularly: recapping meetings, reviewing budgets, drafting client updates
Consistent: the output needs to follow the same structure or quality every time, regardless of who runs it
Context-specific: the task requires rules or constraints that don't apply everywhere, like always flagging scope changes or always writing in a specific tone
📌 A good rule of thumb: if you'd write the same prompt twice, it's worth turning into a skill.
Before You Start
Skills require Productive AI to be enabled for your organization. Admins can turn this on in Settings > Productive AI.
What's in a Skill?
Each skill has four fields:
Name: how you identify and reference the skill
Description: a short summary of what the skill does. The AI Assistant and agents use the name and description together to decide whether to apply a skill automatically, so make sure to write it clearly and specifically, not just as a label.
Instructions: the core of the skill; write in plain language what the AI should do, what tone to use, and what scope to stay within
Auto-activate: when enabled, the AI Assistant or agents will consider using this skill automatically, even if you haven't explicitly selected it. The AI uses the skill's name and description to decide whether it's relevant to your prompt.
How Skills Are Used
There are a couple of ways skills are applied when you work with AI in Productive.
In the AI Assistant: select a skill before or during a chat session to apply its instructions to that conversation
In AI Agents: share the skill with an agent, or add it directly from the agent's settings; the agent follows those instructions every time it runs
Automatically: when Auto-activate is on, the AI Assistant and agents scan all skills available to the user or agent and apply any whose name and description match what's being asked without you explicitly selecting them. The more specific the name and description, the better the match.
👉 How to Create and Manage Skills: step-by-step instructions for building, editing, sharing, and deleting skills
👉 Working With Skills: practical use cases and tips
Skill Templates
If you're not sure where to start, Productive includes a library of ready-made skill templates across categories including Project Management, Resourcing, Budgeting & Finance, Time Tracking, and Engineering & Product. Use them as-is or customize them to fit your workflow.
Permissions
All Productive users can create and use skills by default. Two permissions under the Agents permission group control this:
View Skills: can see and use skills
Add, Edit, and Delete Skills: can create, edit, share, and delete skills
Both are enabled by default for all permission sets. If your organization uses custom permission sets, you can turn these on or off per set.
📌 Client users do not have access to Skills.
What to Check Out Next
👉 How to Create and Manage Skills: step-by-step instructions for building, editing, sharing, and deleting skills
👉 Working With Skills: practical examples and tips for using skills in the AI Assistant and with agents
👉 AI Assistant: learn how to chat with Productive's AI Assistant and get things done faster
👉 Agents: set up autonomous agents that run tasks on your behalf using assigned skills