Skills

Skills are reusable workflows that Nova follows when completing a specific task, especially one involving multiple steps or specific requirements. If you find yourself giving Nova the same detailed request every week, such as a referral report formatted a particular way, save it as a skill. From then on you can run the whole workflow with a single command, and everyone gets the same consistent output every time. Skills are different from custom instructions. Instructions are background preferences Nova applies to every conversation. A skill is a playbook for one specific task that Nova only uses when that task comes up.

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Creating a skill

Names and shortcuts must be unique across the skills you can see, so if a team or built-in skill already uses a name, pick a different one. You can have up to 50 personal skills at a time.

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Let Nova draft it for you

You don’t have to write a skill by hand. Click Create one with Nova in the create panel, or just ask Nova in a chat to help you make a skill. Nova may also offer to save a workflow as a skill after you finish a multi-step task together. When it does, a New skill card appears in the chat and you choose Save skill or Skip. Nothing is saved without your say-so.

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Using a skill in a chat

There are two ways a skill gets used:

• Type its shortcut. Type / at the start of the chat input to see a list of your skills with their descriptions. Pick one, or keep typing to filter. You can send the shortcut on its own to run the skill, or mention it inside a longer request.
• Let Nova pick it. Nova automatically uses a skill when your request matches its description. That’s why a clear “When should Nova use this?” field matters.

When Nova uses a skill, the response shows a “skill used” note with the skill’s name, so you always know when a saved workflow shaped the answer. Once a skill is active in a conversation, Nova keeps following it for your follow-up messages in that thread. Nova can use up to 5 skills in a single response.

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Sharing a skill with your team

New skills are personal by default. Only you see them. To make one available to everyone, open the skill’s menu on the Skills page and choose Share with team. Everyone in your organization can then use it in their Nova chats, and anyone on your team who manages skills can edit or archive it. Sharing moves the skill rather than copying it, so it stops being a personal skill. Each person on your team can turn any shared or built-in skill off for themselves with Disable for you in the skill’s menu. That only affects them. The skill stays available to everyone else.

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Editing and archiving

Open a skill’s menu and choose Edit to change any field. Built-in skills from Let’s Do This can’t be edited, but you can disable them for yourself. To remove a skill, choose Archive. Nova stops using it, but nothing is deleted, and you can restore it from the Archived skills section later. Archiving a team skill affects everyone on your team, so the confirmation dialog will warn you first. If someone claimed the skill’s name or shortcut while it was archived, the restored skill gets a numbered variant of its old name so nothing clashes.

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If a save is rejected

What happens: you see a Skill text rejected message when saving. Why: every skill is checked for text that reads like an attempt to change how Nova fundamentally behaves, such as instructions to ignore its guidelines or pretend to be something else. Occasionally a legitimate phrase can trip this check. What to do: reword the flagged part in plain terms, describing the task rather than instructing Nova to take on a new persona, and save again.

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If someone edited the skill at the same time

What happens: you see an Out of date message when saving, and the skill list refreshes. Why: a teammate changed the skill after you opened it, and saving would have overwritten their edit. What to do: reopen the skill and apply your change on top of the latest version.