What are skills?

Skills are saved instructions that agents draw on when planning a task. Define a procedure once, and agents can apply it to relevant work — no manual attachment needed.

What skills do

Without skills, an agent works from your task description alone. That works for one-off requests, but for procedures you repeat, the agent improvises from scratch each time. Skills give the agent a reliable playbook. Record or write the steps once, and the agent draws on them whenever the task matches.

• Reliable execution: Skills give agents clear, step-by-step instructions for recurring procedures, reducing the need to improvise each time.
• Define once, reuse often: Teach a workflow, and agents can draw on it for relevant future tasks.

You don't assign skills to tasks manually. The agent reads all available skills while planning and decides which ones apply. Writing clear, specific skill descriptions helps the agent select the right ones — selection can vary depending on task phrasing and model behavior.

What a skill contains

Every skill has two key parts:

• Description: A short summary the agent reads when deciding whether the skill applies to a task. Specific descriptions (for example, "Export the weekly sales report from the analytics dashboard") are more reliably matched than vague ones.
• Skill content: The step-by-step instructions in the body of the SKILL.md file. This is what the agent follows when it uses the skill.

Skills also have an enabled state. A disabled skill stays in your library, but agents skip it during planning. This lets you keep a skill on hand without deleting it — useful for seasonal or infrequent procedures.

Skills vs recordings

Most skills start as a recording. A recording is the raw browser session captured by the MultiClaw Chrome Extension — every click, keystroke, and page navigation you made. A skill is the processed, usable version: structured instructions an agent can follow.

Think of a recording as raw footage and a skill as the finished playbook you build from it.

Where skills live

Skills are stored as SKILL.md files in ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/ (macOS and Linux). Each skill has its own subfolder containing a single SKILL.md file.

When you're connected to a MultiClaw Cloud workspace, skills are saved directly to MultiClaw Cloud and become available to agents running on cloud desktops. The Skills screen in the desktop app is your central view for browsing, searching, and managing all your skills.

Create a skill

Use the MultiClaw Chrome Extension to record steps in your browser, then convert the recording into a skill. You can also create or edit a skill directly by writing a SKILL.md file in ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/.

See Record a browser workflow for the full recording flow. To view, edit, or disable a skill after creating it, see Manage your skills.