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Skills

Skills are specialized knowledge packs Strata loads on demand to do a task well — for example, the formatting rules for an institutional Excel workbook, or the design system for a dashboard.

What a skill is

Each skill is a self-contained document of instructions, formatting specs, and best practices the AI consults before tackling a particular type of task. Strata fetches a skill at the moment it is needed, then writes its response using that skill's guidance.

There are 13 built-in skills across three categories. In the Skills directory these are grouped under Create, Analyze, and Connect.

Create skills (used to produce output)

  • Excel Spreadsheets — Workbook formatting, including accounting/currency/percentage formats, freeze panes, conditional formatting, defined names, and charts.
  • PDF Reports — Report layout and styling with tables, charts, and KPI cards.
  • PowerPoint Presentations — Branded slide-deck design.
  • Word Documents — Memos, proposals, and longer narrative documents.
  • Markdown Files — Notes, documentation, specs, and structured text.
  • Charts & Visualizations — Picking the right inline chart type, including waterfall, funnel, and gauge.
  • Interactive Dashboards — Multi-component, full-page HTML dashboards.
  • Rich Components — Comparison cards, progress bars, timelines, correlation matrices, and email drafts.

Analyze skills (used to think about data)

  • Query Performance — SQL tuning, index recommendations, and execution-plan analysis.
  • Advanced Analysis — Trend detection, anomaly detection, correlation, and descriptive statistics.
  • Financial Analysis — Revenue, profitability, aging, budget, and variance analysis.

Connect skills (used with connected services)

  • Email & Outlook — Searching, reading, drafting, and sending email with attachments.
  • OneDrive Files — Search, read, and save patterns for OneDrive, with folder navigation.

How Strata picks a skill

Strata fetches a skill automatically when your request matches. For example:

  • Ask for an Excel file → the Excel Spreadsheets skill loads.
  • Ask for a dashboard → the Interactive Dashboards skill loads.
  • Ask about query performance → the Query Performance skill loads.

You will see the load show up as an action step like "Loaded 1 skill" in the trail above the response. See /docs/chat for the action-step trail.

Pinning skills

You can pin as many skills as you like — there is no limit — so Strata knows they are immediately available without having to discover them first. Pinning puts the skill's name in front of Strata for the conversation; it still loads the skill's instructions at the moment it uses one, so pinning shortens the finding rather than the reading. Pinning is useful for:

  • Skills you use constantly (Excel Spreadsheets if you live in spreadsheets).
  • Analysis skills you want consistently applied (Financial Analysis on every revenue question).
  • Domain-specific extensions of how you want output styled.

Browsing and pinning

  1. Click the plus button (+) on the left of the chat composer.
  2. Hover Skills to open the sub-menu. It lists your pinned skills; click Manage in Directory at the bottom to open the Skills Library. (You can also reach it from Settings → Extensions → Skills Library → Open Directory.)
  3. The directory shows all 13 skills, grouped by category, with a grey plus button on each card.
  4. Click the plus to pin a skill. Once pinned, the plus turns into an × — click it again to unpin.

Using a pinned skill from the composer

Pinned skills also appear:

  • In the plus menu under Skills as quick-access entries (shown as a /skill-slug token, e.g. /excel-generation).
  • In the slash menu — type / in the composer to see them listed as /skill-slug items.

Selecting a pinned skill this way inserts its /skill-slug token into your message as text (the skill's ID with underscores shown as dashes, such as /financial-reporting). Leave it in and send your prompt — the token acts as a hint that you want that skill considered for the next message.

When NOT to pin

If you only use a skill occasionally, leave it unpinned — Strata finds it automatically when needed and pinning it just takes a slot. Reserve pins for skills you use almost every day.

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