Browse and assign skills

The Skills panel

Open the panel from the right sidebar. It lists every skill Cerevisor found on launch, merged from all your skill folders (see What are skills? for the full list).

Layout

Skills are grouped by category (research, content, design, etc.), each group under a labelled divider. Each row shows:

• The skill's icon and name.
• A short summary (from the skill's description).
• For plugin-namespaced skills, a small prefix pill carrying the namespace.

Panel controls

• Resize: Drag the left edge (150–520 px range).
• Collapse: Click the chevron in the header (collapses to a narrow strip).
• Search: Type in the search box at the top to filter.
• Reset Skills: Button to force a fresh rescan of all skill folders.

Assigning a skill

Two ways.

Drag onto an agent

Drag a skill row from the panel onto any agent card. The agent's skill slots highlight as you drag. Drop on any slot: the skill is added.

An agent card shows 6 skill slots (the MAX_ABILITY_SLOTS constant). Skills beyond the sixth collapse into a "+N" overflow indicator on the card.

From the Agent Config popup

Open Agent Config (click the agent's role badge). Find the Equipped Skills section. Equipped skills show as removable chips; use the skill picker dropdown below them to add more. The dropdown is disabled once six skills are equipped.

The picker shows the same merged skill registry as the side panel.

Viewing a skill

Two ways to read a skill's full documentation:

• Double-click a skill row in the Skills panel.
• Double-click an equipped skill hexagon on any agent card.

This opens the Skill Viewer: a read-only rendered markdown viewer with syntax highlighting.

The Skill Viewer shows the skill's name, its category, and the full rendered SKILL.md. A reading-progress bar tracks how far you've scrolled. Close it with the X button in the header or by pressing Esc.

Removing a skill from an agent

Hover the equipped skill's hexagon. An X button appears in the top-left of the slot. Click it.

Removal is immediate, no confirmation. Use Ctrl+Z to undo.

Recent skills

Cerevisor remembers the last six skills you assigned. They appear in a "Recent" group at the top of the Skills panel for one-click access.

The find_skills tool

Agents can themselves search for relevant skills via the find_skills tool. The tool runs a semantic + keyword search and returns the top matches. Agents typically use this when they recognize they need a capability but don't know if it exists.

This is why a well-written skill description is important: agents won't find a skill they should use if the description doesn't surface for the relevant query.

Compatibility hints

Some skills only work with specific providers (e.g. skills that depend on Anthropic-specific tools).

Cerevisor surfaces this in three places:

• The Skill Workshop shows a compatibility pill on each skill ("Universal", "Claude only", "2 of 7", …), and equipped skill chips on agent cards carry a compact marker.
• The chat builder won't automatically attach an incompatible skill to an agent; when you're driving the session, it asks first and you can attach anyway.
• Before any workflow runs, a preflight check blocks the run if an assigned skill declares it won't work with that agent's provider.

See Skill compatibility with providers for the full picture.

The "skills:updated" event

When Cerevisor's background LLM-summary pass finishes (a few seconds after launch), the Skills panel updates with richer descriptions. You don't need to do anything: the panel re-renders automatically.

If you've just added a new skill folder by hand (e.g. by cloning a skill repo into ~/.claude/skills/), use the Reset Skills button to force a fresh scan.