Agent skills, sometimes called recipes, are reusable instructions for how the Mindsmith Agent should generate, format, or edit content.
By applying different skills, you can force the Mindsmith Agent to keep content extremely brief, prevent it from rewriting compliance documents, or instruct it to turn a video into an interactive simulation.
Using built-in skills
Mindsmith includes built-in skills for common instructional design tasks. You can use them whenever you work with the Mindsmith Agent.
To apply a skill, open the Mindsmith Agent and click the skills button to expand the skill tray. Select the skill you want to use. The skill applies to your next request, and you can select it again for a later request.
Here are some of the most popular built-in skills you can use:
Micro Learning: Guides the Mindsmith Agent toward short, mobile-friendly pages with 1-2 tiles that each take less than about 20 seconds to consume.
Convert Document: Transforms your uploaded documents into standard Mindsmith tiles (like text tiles, image tiles, and list tiles) while strictly preserving the original wording.
Verbatim: Imports document content word-for-word without adding quizzes, interactions, or generated content. Use it when approved wording must not change.
Humanize: Rewrites AI-sounding prose so it reads more naturally.
Video Handling: Analyzes a video, extracts relevant segments, creates supporting text, and pulls frames such as presentation slides or charts into image tiles.
Video Simulation: Converts an uploaded video into a fully interactive branching experience or software simulation.
Outline: Imports your uploaded outline directly into the storyboard, using your headings to establish the page structure without expanding on the text.
Needs Analysis: Instructs the Mindsmith Agent to hold off on generating content and instead ask you targeted questions about your audience, goals, and constraints.
Clear & Focused: Applies cognitive-load and multimedia principles so each tile communicates one clear idea.
Narrative-Driven: Builds the lesson around a recurring character, conflict, and resolution.
Scaffolded Practice: Teaches a procedure through a worked example, partially supported practice, and independent practice.
Accessible & Inclusive: Creates or audits content for alt text, captions, contrast, semantic structure, and keyboard-friendly alternatives.
Assessment Architect: Creates objective-aligned assessments with varied questions, plausible distractors, and useful feedback.
The skill tray changes with the authoring surface. Conversation creation also offers:
Sales Roleplay: Establishes a realistic business-to-business sales practice scenario and can be combined with the more focused sales skills below.
Discovery Questioning: Practices consultative questions that uncover a buyer's situation, problems, consequences, and desired payoff.
Insight-Led Selling: Practices teaching and tailoring a commercial insight while keeping control of the conversation.
Deal Qualification: Practices identifying metrics, decision-makers, buying criteria and process, pain, champions, and competition.
Problem-Led Selling: Keeps the learner focused on diagnosing the buyer's problem before proposing a solution.
Value-Based Selling: Practices connecting a solution to return on investment, total cost, payback, and risk.
Concise Selling: Practices clear, focused selling for busy or distracted buyers.
Objection Handling: Adds realistic objections and evaluates how well the learner acknowledges, clarifies, and reframes them.
Standalone Video creation offers Training Module, Podcast Style, Avatar Centric, and Avatar Free skills for choosing the video's presentation format. When branching-related features are enabled, Test Forward can let knowledgeable learners skip ahead after an opening check, while Reinforce adds remediation after an incorrect answer.
Feature-gated skills appear only when their related authoring feature is enabled.
Creating custom skills
If you have specific formatting requirements, brand guidelines, or unique pedagogical approaches, you can create your own custom skills.
Open the Mindsmith Agent and expand the skills tray.
Click the + Create skill button at the top of the tray.
Enter a Skill name and, optionally, a short Description so you know what the skill does at a glance.
In the Prompt box, type your specific instructions for the Mindsmith Agent (up to 20,000 characters).
Click Save to add the skill to your personal "My Skills" list.
When writing a custom skill prompt, name the tile types you want. For example, replace "make it interactive" with "Use accordion tiles for definitions and a flashcards tile for review."
Sharing skills with your organization
If you are an Organization Admin, you can create standardized skills and share them with your entire team. This is a great way to ensure all authors adhere to your company's instructional design standards.
To share a skill, create a new skill or edit an existing one. In the dialog box, check the Publish to organization box before clicking save.
Once published, this skill will appear under the "Org Skills" category in the skill tray for every member of your workspace. If you are not an Org Admin, this checkbox will be disabled, and you will need to contact your administrator to publish a skill globally.
Managing your custom skills
You can update or remove the custom skills you have created.
To manage your skills, open the skills tray and hover your mouse over the custom skill you want to modify.
Click the pencil icon to open the editor and update the name, description, or prompt.
Click the trash icon to delete the skill permanently.
You can edit or delete only your own custom skills. Once a skill is published to the organization, only an Org Admin can edit or delete it. Deleting an organizational skill removes it from the tray for all workspace members.