osFoundry / Platform
Skills
Skills are markdown playbooks Maestro reads when conditions match. Versioned per workspace.
What it is
Skills are markdown playbooks that Maestro, osFoundry's agent, reads and applies when the conditions you describe are met. Instead of re-explaining the same procedure in every chat, you write it down once as a plain markdown file: what the task is, when it applies, and the steps to follow. Maestro pulls the relevant skill into context at the moment it is needed, so a house style guide, a deployment checklist, or a data-cleaning routine becomes a repeatable behavior rather than a one-off prompt.
Inside osFoundry, Skills live in the Studio and are versioned per workspace. Because osFoundry is a BYOK desktop workspace, the same skill runs against whatever model you point it at — a local model on your own machine, a cloud provider on your own API key, or a self-hosted endpoint — with no reseller markup and, if you choose, your data never leaving your device. Versioning per workspace means a change to a skill is scoped and traceable: your team's playbooks evolve together, and you can see what a skill said at a given point rather than guessing why the agent behaved differently last week.
The value is consistency without lock-in. A skill is just markdown, so it is readable, diffable, and editable by anyone on the team without a proprietary editor. Conditions decide when it fires, so agents stay lean — they only load the guidance that matters for the task in front of them instead of carrying one giant system prompt. Pair Skills with the rest of osFoundry (chat, agents, apps, code, and knowledge in one place) and the playbooks you write become the connective tissue that makes your agents behave the way your team actually works.
Key capabilities
- Write reusable agent instructions as plain markdown files, no proprietary format to learn
- Maestro loads a skill automatically when the conditions you define are met
- Skills are versioned per workspace so changes are scoped and traceable across your team
- Run the same skill against any model you bring — local, cloud, or self-hosted, on your own key
- Keep agents lean: only the guidance relevant to the current task is pulled into context
Use cases
- Engineering lead: encode a deployment checklist as a skill so the agent follows the same release steps every time
- Content team: capture the house style guide once and have every draft conform without re-pasting the rules
- Data analyst: define a cleaning-and-formatting routine that fires whenever the agent handles a raw export
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a Skill in osFoundry?
A Skill is a markdown playbook you write once. It describes a task and the conditions under which it applies, and Maestro reads it and applies its steps automatically when those conditions match, instead of you re-explaining the procedure in every conversation.
How is a Skill different from just writing a long prompt?
A prompt is typed fresh each time and applies to one chat. A Skill is a saved, versioned file that fires only when its conditions match, so it is reusable across chats, editable as plain markdown, and keeps agents from carrying instructions that are irrelevant to the current task.
Does using Skills lock me into a specific AI model?
No. osFoundry is bring-your-own-key, so a skill runs against whatever model you point it at — a local model, a cloud provider on your own API key, or a self-hosted endpoint. The playbook is model-agnostic markdown; the model is your choice.