Skills & automations
Concept page: Skills & automations. This guide is about the day-to-day operation.
Where to find them
Open the workspace's Settings panel and switch to either the Skills or Automations tab.
Defining a custom skill
- Click New skill.
- Give it a slug, a display name, and a one-line description.
- Write the instructions — clear prose telling the agent how to use the skill, when to apply it, and what's out of scope.
- Pick the activation mode:
chat,tasks, orboth. - Optionally add triggers — keywords or file patterns that tell the agent the skill is relevant.
- Save and enable.
Custom skills are managed per workspace. Duplicate an installed skill when you need an editable workspace-specific version.
Enabling a public skill
From the same panel, browse the public skill gallery and toggle the ones you want available to the agent. They appear alongside your custom skills with a "Public" tag.
Creating an automation
- Click New automation.
- Write the saved prompt the agent should run.
- Choose a trigger:
- Manual — fire from the UI on demand.
- Schedule — cron expression with a configurable timezone.
- Webhook integrations are managed separately in workspace settings; incoming events can create tasks for the workspace.
- Optionally include schedule context, target services, or task links in the prompt.
- Save.
Auditing runs
Every automation has a run history. Each run is a chat thread:
- Trigger (manual or schedule).
- Tool calls, terminal output, file edits.
- Resulting commits and pull requests, if any.
- Final status (success, failure, stopped).
Common patterns
- Nightly dependency upgrade — a skill that bumps minor versions, runs tests, and opens a PR. Schedule daily.
- Triage incoming issues — use a webhook integration to turn incoming provider events into tasks, then assign them to the Codex agent when AI follow-up is needed.
- Sweep stale branches — schedule weekly. The skill lists merged branches and proposes deletions.
- Generate release notes — manual. The skill reads recent merges and drafts notes.