A skill is a task that worked, saved as a recipe any assistant in the company can run: the instructions, the sources it needs, the shape of the result, and the feedback that shaped it. In Nrth OS you make one by turning a result you were happy with into a skill, or by describing the task in plain words. No code, no prompt engineering course.
Why skills, and not just prompts
A prompt lives in one person’s head or clipboard. When they leave, or forget, the company starts over. A skill lives in the workspace, with a name, a last-tested date and a version. It is the difference between a colleague who knows how to do the invoice check and a written procedure for it. Companies run on procedures.
Two ways to make one
From a run. You ran the Monday invoice check for three weeks, gave feedback twice, and the results are now right. Turn it into a skill. Nrth OS packages the task sentence, the source types it used (not the files themselves), the result format and what your feedback said. You name it. It runs once as a test, and you approve it.
From a description. You haven’t run it yet, but you know what you want. Write it the way you’d brief a new colleague: what to read, what to do, what to hand back, what to watch out for. Nrth OS turns that into a draft skill and runs it once so you can give feedback before anyone else uses it.
What a skill contains
| Part | Example from the invoice check |
|---|---|
| Task sentence | Go through last week’s supplier invoices and flag anything that doesn’t match our agreements |
| Sources it expects | A folder of invoices, a folder of agreements, an optional price list |
| Result shape | Count checked, list of exceptions with reason and source, «the rest match» |
| Rules from feedback | Treat same amount within 30 days as possible duplicate; show agreed vs invoiced price side by side |
| Data policy | Inherited from the assistant that runs it |
The skill does not contain your documents. It contains how to work with documents like yours.
Reusing it
With several assistants, the quotes assistant can run the invoice-check skill on a supplier’s quote to see whether it matches the agreement before you accept it. The project assistant can run it on a subcontractor’s invoices. Same skill, different sources. When a skill stops working because an agreement changed, you fix it once and every assistant gets the fix.
Testing and deleting
Every skill shows when it was last tested, and you can run it on a sample at any time. You can delete the ones you don’t need.
What’s coming
In the first version, skills are shared within your company. Exporting skills to share between companies is planned for a later version. We would rather get the inside right first.