Personal Skills

Personal Skills allow you to capture commonly used workflows and package them as reusable automations. Instead of repeating the same multi-step process manually, you can save it as a skill and execute it with a single command in future sessions.

Create from Scratch (/create-skill)

Use the /create-skill command to define a new skill through an interactive guided process:

1. Name your skill — give it a descriptive name (e.g., “Standard Gibson Cloning”, “Weekly BLAST Check”)
2. Define input parameters — specify what the skill needs to run (e.g., gene name, host organism, vector backbone)
3. Describe execution steps — outline the sequence of operations the skill should perform
4. Set expected output — define what the skill should produce (e.g., GenBank file, primer table, research report)

AI Scientist guides you through each step, suggesting defaults based on common patterns in your previous work.

Save from Session (/save-skill)

Use the /save-skill command to automatically extract a completed workflow from your current session and package it as a reusable skill. AI Scientist analyzes the sequence of actions you performed — sequence retrieval, modifications, assembly, analysis — and distills them into a reproducible skill template.

This is the fastest way to create skills: just do the work once, then save it for reuse.

Skill Management

Skills support full lifecycle management:

• Version control — update skills as your protocols evolve, with previous versions preserved for reference
• Tag classification — organize skills by category (e.g., “cloning”, “analysis”, “reporting”), project, or team
• Archiving — archive skills that are no longer actively used without deleting them, keeping your active skill list focused

Using Skills

Once created, skills appear in your command palette. Invoke a skill, provide the required input parameters, and AI Scientist executes the full workflow automatically — applying the same sequence of operations you defined, adapted to the new inputs.