Skills

🎯 How Skills Work

When you ask the agent to perform a task, it analyzes your request and determines which skills are needed. The agent then loads the skill manifest, checks permissions, and executes the required tools. Each tool call goes through the permission gate — if the skill needs file access or shell commands, you'll be asked to approve (unless you've set the profile to auto-allow).

Skills are sandboxed — they can only access what their manifest declares. A document skill can't execute shell commands unless explicitly granted. This ensures security even with third-party skills from the marketplace.

🔧 Using Skills

Skills are used automatically when you interact with the agent. For example:

• "Create a PDF report" → Agent uses the aura-pdf skill
• "Analyze this spreadsheet" → Agent uses the aura-spreadsheets skill
• "Browse this website and extract data" → Agent uses the aura-browser-assistant skill
• "Convert this image to WebP" → Agent uses the aura-file-converter skill

You can also explicitly request a skill by name: "Use the research skill to find information about..."

📋 Skill Manifest Format

Each skill is defined in a JSON file with this structure:

{
  "id": "aura-documents",
  "name": "Documents",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "summary": "Create, edit, and format documents",
  "description": "Full document processing with...",
  "publisher": "aura-work",
  "categories": ["documents", "productivity"],
  "risk": "low",
  "permissions": [
    { "category": "file", "action": "write", "target": "*.md" }
  ],
  "tools": [
    {
      "name": "create_document",
      "description": "Create a new document",
      "parameters": {
        "title": { "type": "string", "required": true },
        "format": { "type": "string", "enum": ["md", "txt", "docx"] }
      }
    }
  ],
  "install": {
    "command": "npm install",
    "workingDir": "skills/documents"
  }
}

🏗️ Creating Custom Skills

You can create your own skills by following these steps:

1. 1. Create a new JSON file in registry/skills/
2. 2. Define the skill identity (id, name, version, publisher)
3. 3. Add categories and set the risk level
4. 4. Declare required permissions (file, shell, browser, etc.)
5. 5. Define tools with their parameters and descriptions
6. 6. Add install instructions if needed
7. 7. Validate with node scripts/validate-marketplace-manifests.js
8. 8. Submit a PR to the registry

See registry/skills/aura-documents.json for a complete example.

📊 Risk Levels Explained

Each skill has a risk level based on its required permissions:

High-risk skills require explicit approval in ask-first mode. You can configure auto-approval for specific categories in Settings → Permissions.

🏪 Marketplace

The marketplace (registry/marketplace.json) aggregates skills, MCP servers, and plugins. Each entry includes:

• Localized descriptions — available in 20 languages
• Icon and cover images — SVG assets in registry/assets/
• Version history — for updates and rollbacks
• Publisher verification — official vs community skills
• Compatibility info — minimum Aura Work version required

Install skills from the Plugins panel in the desktop app or use the CLI: aura skill install <skill-id>

web-search

Searches the web and extracts up-to-date information along with source links. Supports multiple search engines.