Custom skills
Create reusable skills that capture your firm's house style and share best practices across your team
Skills are the reusable building blocks Deliverables AI runs to produce a deliverable — a CIM, a teaser, an LBO model, an IC memo, a buyer list. The skills library ships with a full catalog out of the box, and your workspace can add its own custom skills to capture the way your firm does things.
When to create a custom skill
Custom skills are for teams that want:
- Consistent structure — the same sections, slide count, and flow every time
- House style — your brand's templates, colors, typography, and voice
- Shared best practices — instructions that produce reliable, on-brand output for anyone on the team
- Repeatable deliverables — standard work products multiple people create regularly
For most requests, the built-in skills plus a good prompt are all you need. Custom skills add value when you produce the same type of deliverable repeatedly and want it to come out the same way every time.
How to create a custom skill
The fastest way to author a skill is the guided skill creator:
- Open the skills library in your workspace and select + New skill
- The assistant asks a few short questions about what the skill should do
- It drafts the skill, runs a quick test, and shows you the result
- Approve it to publish the skill to your library
Your new skill is private to you by default. A workspace admin can share it with the whole team so everyone produces the same deliverable the same way.
Capturing your firm's house style for decks
For branded presentations — CIMs, teasers, pitches, management presentations — use the /onboard-decks flow instead of writing instructions by hand. Upload a few example decks and Deliverables AI extracts your brand kit (palette, typography, chrome, voice) and applies it to the base deck skills, so every deck renders in your house style. See prompting guide for how to steer individual decks.
What you can customize
Name and description
Give the skill a clear name and a short description of when to use it and what it produces. This helps teammates pick the right skill.
Instructions
The heart of a skill is its instructions — the guidance combined with each request when the skill runs. This is where you store:
- Brand guidelines — voice, tone, terminology, and messaging standards
- Structure requirements — standard sections, slide counts, or content flow
- Content rules — what to include, exclude, or emphasize
- Style preferences — how to present data, level of detail, and formatting conventions
Instructions work alongside the request, so you don't need to repeat project-specific details a user will provide themselves.
Sharing and managing skills
Custom skills appear in the skills library alongside the built-in catalog, marked as your workspace's own. Private skills are visible only to their author; firm skills (published by an admin) are available to everyone in the workspace and in every project.
Start from a built-in skill that's close to what you need, then refine it. That's faster than authoring from scratch.
Custom skills vs. good prompts
| Use a good prompt when... | Use a custom skill when... |
|---|---|
| One-off or occasional deliverables | The same deliverable type weekly or monthly |
| You're the only one creating it | Multiple team members create it |
| Requirements vary each time | Structure should be identical each time |
| Testing different approaches | You've found an approach that works |
Custom skills vs. custom templates
Custom skills control the AI's behavior — structure, tone, and content rules. Custom PowerPoint templates control the visual design — slide layouts, fonts, colors, and logos. Enterprise teams often use both: a custom skill for consistent content and a custom template (or brand kit) for consistent branding.
Need help building a skill?
Our team can help you author skills tailored to your workflow. Book a call to discuss your requirements and get help setting up skills that work for your team.