Tab: Skills (and the Global Catalog)

Polyant has two skill-related screens: the per-instance Skills tab (covered here, top) and the global Skills catalog (/skills in the sidebar, covered at the bottom of this page).

Per-instance Skills tab

The Skills tab on an instance is where you attach skills from the global catalog to that instance.

What you see

A two-column layout:

Left column. Every skill in the global catalog. Each row shows the skill name, category, version, and an enable switch.
Right column. The currently enabled skills for this instance, with version pins and an env-vars button.

Enabling a skill

Toggling a skill on does three things:

Inserts a row in instance_skills linking this instance to that skill.
Pins the current version of the skill (semantic versioning). Future bumps to the global skill do not auto-apply — you upgrade explicitly.
Recomputes the per-instance tool set: tools declared as skillTools for this skill become enabled.

Configuring environment variables

Skills can declare required environment variables in their YAML frontmatter:


---
name: hubspot
description: HubSpot CRM operations
requiredEnv:
  - name: HUBSPOT_API_KEY
    description: HubSpot private app token (Bearer)
    sensitive: true
  - name: HUBSPOT_PORTAL_ID
    description: Numeric portal id, used in deep links
    sensitive: false
---

For each enabled skill, click the environment variables button to open a dialog. You will see one row per requiredEnv entry. Sensitive entries hide the value behind a password input; non-sensitive entries show in clear text.

Values are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM using the ENCRYPTION_KEY from the engine env. They are decrypted on demand inside the agent runtime and exposed to the skill via an <skill_env> XML block — never to the LLM as plain context.

Versioning and pinning

Skills are versioned semantically (e.g. 1.4.2). When the global skill catalog ships a new version, you have to explicitly upgrade. Click the version dropdown next to the skill name and pick the new version. The change is persisted on save.

Pinning protects production: a skill author can publish a breaking change without breaking every instance that has the skill enabled.

Disabling

Toggling a skill off removes the instance_skills row. The encrypted env vars are kept (for restoration) unless you click Clear env vars explicitly.

Skills (Global Catalog)

The Skills screen (/skills in the sidebar) is the global catalog. Each skill in the catalog can be enabled on any instance from that instance’s Skills tab.

What a skill is

A skill is a bundle of:

Slug + name + description + category.
One or more versions. Each version has a content blob (the skill’s prompt + script bundle) and metadata.
A list of tools the skill enables when active (the skillTools link).
Required environment variables. Declared in YAML frontmatter; their values are configured per instance.

CRUD

List. Tabular: name, category, description, version count, status.
Create. Click New skill. Fill in the slug (URL-safe, immutable), the human-readable name, the description (one or two sentences), the category. Save. The skill starts at version 1.0.0.
Edit. Click a row. The detail page lets you edit name, description, category, current version pointer, and status. The version content itself is edited in a code-style editor.
Add a version. Use the New version button on the detail page. Bump the semantic version (e.g. 1.0.0 → 1.1.0). Old versions remain available — instances pinned to 1.0.0 continue using 1.0.0 until you upgrade them.
Delete. Removes the skill and all its versions. Instances that had this skill enabled have it cleared automatically.

Importing skill bundles

The catalog supports importing JSON bundles. Use this to share a skill set across deployments or to onboard from a marketplace. Click Import, choose the JSON file, confirm the diff (any conflicting slugs are flagged), import.

There is no catalog-level Export button — to extract skill bundles, use the per-instance export which already includes pinned skills with their content.