Skills

A skill defines how a model works: its system instructions, its preferred model, and the tools and MCP access it should have. Configure it once in the Skills tab and apply it wherever you start work.

Built-in skills

Rusty ships with these:

Skill	Purpose
build	Implement features, write clean code and run tests. Action-oriented. This is the default for new Agent chats.
plan	Analyze architecture, explore code and propose plans. Read-only focus.
grind-me	Ask many clarifying questions before doing anything, and understand requirements thoroughly first.
task-auditor	Analyze tasks and suggest changes, approaches and execution plans. Does not write code.

A fifth skill, vfs-agent, is an internal reconciliation agent used by Rusty Canvas. It is not selectable.

Create a skill

1. Open Skills in the left rail.
2. Click New Skill.
3. Fill in:
   • a name,
   • a short description of what this skill does,
   • the system prompt, which is the instructions the model receives,
   • optionally a model. Leave it on Use default model to follow whatever model the chat uses.
4. Save. Rusty confirms with Changes have been saved.

Skills are saved per workspace as JSON files in .rusty/skills/, one file per skill, so you can commit them with your project. See The .rusty folder.

Use a skill

• In Agent Mode, choose a skill in the Select skill menu next to the message box. While the chat follows a workflow, the menu stays on build and reads tools set per step: each step's profile decides its tools, and your choice returns with Single agent.
• In Rusty Canvas, choose a skill on each task node, next to its model.
• The canvas Global Explorer is a planning surface, so it only offers the planning skills, plan and task-auditor.

Skills or profiles?

They work at different levels:

• A skill is what you pick for a chat or a canvas task: the working style and prompt.
• A profile is used by a workflow step and controls tools, limits, rules and completion checks. Rusty ships 12 built-in profiles.

See Profiles & workflows for profiles.