Skills & Tools

Settings → Agent is where you decide what each agent is allowed to do and what instructions it carries.

The page is organized by agent rather than as one flat list, because that's the thing that actually matters: the Better Sidebar agent can never use the file tools, and a list that mixed them together would imply otherwise.

Approval Policies

These three switches live in the Agent Dock, under What it may do. They apply to any running task.

Switch	Default	Effect
Run queries without asking	On	Read-only queries execute directly
Change data without asking	Off	Every write asks first
Keep going on its own	On	Steps chain automatically; off means you press Enter after each one

Why reads default to on

Asking permission for every SELECT would make the agent unusable — a single question can involve a dozen queries. Reads can't damage anything, so they run.

Why writes default to off

Because they can. A misread instruction that renames forty conversations is a bad afternoon. The default is that you see each change before it happens.

Once you've watched it work a few times and trust its judgment on a particular kind of task, Don't ask again for this task in the approval prompt gets you a hands-off run without permanently loosening the setting. Turning Change data without asking on permanently is available, and reasonable if you rely on the agent daily — just know that undo only covers the most recent task.

Why "keep going on its own" is separate

It looks redundant next to the other two, and it isn't. The other two are about approval; this one is about whether the loop may advance unattended at all.

Turn it off and you review every round before it continues — without having to confirm every individual query. Some people want to watch the reasoning, not police the permissions.

The two are combined by intersection, which means this switch can only ever make things more manual, never less. Approving a write by hand never causes results to be sent onward behind your back.

Tool Groups

Each agent lists its tool servers with a switch, and expands to show the individual tools inside.

Better Sidebar data — query and change conversations, folders, tags, prompts and snippets.

Tool	What it does
`execute_sql`	Runs queries against the local database
`sync_conversation_messages`	Records message history for conversations that have none
`export`	Downloads conversations as files

Workspace agent

Files — read, write, edit and search text files.

Tool	What it does
`read_file`	Reads a text file with line numbers
`write_file`	Creates a file, or replaces one entirely
`edit_file`	Replaces exact text inside a file
`list_files`	Lists a folder
`glob_files`	Finds files by name pattern
`grep_files`	Searches file contents by regex
`manage_files`	Deletes, moves, creates folders

Documents — read and edit Word, Excel, PDF and PowerPoint by outline and section.

Tool	What it does
`doc_read`	Reads a document: outline, sections, search
`doc_edit`	Applies changes — comments, tracked changes, cells, annotations

Core

Always on for every agent, with no switch:

Tool	What it does
`activate_skill`	Loads specialized instructions for a task type
`complete_task`	Ends the loop and reports results

complete_task has no switch because a session that can't end isn't a preference anyone should be able to express.

Tip

Turning a tool group off removes those tools from the prompt entirely — the agent won't know they exist, rather than trying and failing. If you only ever want the agent as an analyst, switching Better Sidebar data off isn't the way to do it (that's the group it needs for reads too); leave Change data without asking off instead.

Skills

A skill is a block of specialized instructions the agent loads when a task calls for it. It's how the agent knows that spreadsheets should be read schema-first, or that tags should be reused rather than reinvented.

Built-in skills

Better Sidebar agent

Skill	For
Auto-Classify Conversations	Sorting conversations into folders and tags
Sync Missing Messages	Finding and filling conversations with no recorded messages
Export Conversations	Querying and exporting conversation data
Manage Prompt Library	Authoring and refactoring prompts, variables and imports
Manage Snippets	Organizing, deduping and searching snippets

Workspace agent

Skill	For
Review a Word Document	Chapter-by-chapter review with comments and tracked changes
Work Through a Spreadsheet	Schema first, then compute; add rather than overwrite
Read and Review a PDF	Page text, bookmarks, comments, form fields, page operations
Read and Edit PowerPoint	Slide text, speaker notes, shapes, slide order

Built-in skills can be switched off, but not edited.

Writing your own

Click New skill on the agent you want it to belong to. Four fields:

Field
Title	What it's called, e.g. Weekly Triage
Description	One line on what it does — this is what the agent reads to decide whether to load it
Prompt Content	The actual instructions
Always on	Load it every session rather than only when relevant

Up to 20 custom skills.

The description does real work. It's how the agent decides whether this skill applies to what you asked, so describe the situation it's for, not just the action.

What a good skill looks like

Skills earn their keep on workflows you repeat. Instead of retyping a careful five-sentence prompt every Friday, encode it once.

## Task: Weekly triage

Sort everything currently in Inbox.

Steps:
1. List what's in Inbox with dates, and show me the count before doing anything.
2. Group by topic. Match against my existing folders first —
   only propose a new folder if nothing existing fits.
3. Show me the proposed mapping as a table and wait for approval.
4. After I approve, move them and apply tags.
   Reuse existing tags. Never create a tag that's a near-synonym
   of one I already have.
5. Report what moved where, and anything you couldn't classify.

Three things make this work rather than just being a long prompt:

It stops for approval at a defined point, so you're not reviewing after the fact
It constrains creation — folders and tags only get invented when genuinely needed
It asks for a report, so you can tell what happened without reading every step card

Tip

Write the prompt by hand a few times first. Watch where the agent goes off the rails, add a sentence to stop that, and then save it as a skill. Skills written before you know the failure modes tend to be too vague to help.

Editing and deleting

Custom skills get pencil and trash icons. Deleting is permanent. Unsaved edits prompt before discarding.

Where the Agent Isn't Available

The agent needs an open chat with a working input box, because that's how it talks to the model. If you see "Open a chat first", navigate into any conversation and try again.

It also refuses to start a second task while one is running. Stop the running one first, or wait for it.

#Skills & Tools

#Approval Policies

#Why reads default to on

#Why writes default to off

#Why "keep going on its own" is separate

#Tool Groups

#Better Sidebar agent

#Workspace agent

#Core

#Skills

#Built-in skills

#Writing your own

#What a good skill looks like

#Editing and deleting

#Where the Agent Isn't Available