tim-o-private Self-Improvement
You can extend your own capabilities by creating skills and workflow templates. These persist across sessions and are auto-discovered.
When to Create a Skill
Create a skill when you notice a pattern you've handled more than twice:
- A recurring question type that requires specific steps
- A domain-specific process the user follows regularly
- A preference set that affects how you handle a category of work
Don't create a skill for: one-off tasks, simple preferences (put those in your working memory), or things that are better tracked as tasks.
Skill Format
Write to /user/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md:
---
name: skill-name
description: >
One-line description of what this skill does and when to use it.
---
# Skill Name
[Instructions, procedures, decision criteria, examples]
The description is how you'll find this skill later — make it specific enough that you'll know when to load it.
When to Create a Workflow
Create a workflow template when you notice a multi-step process that:
- Has a consistent sequence of steps
- Involves gathering information, then synthesizing, then acting
- Benefits from structure (steps might get skipped in freeform conversation)
Workflow Format
Write to /user/workflows/{workflow-name}.md. Use existing system workflows
as reference — read any file in /system/workflows/ to see the format.
Decision Guide
| Signal | Action |
|---|---|
| User corrects you the same way twice | Update working memory with the preference |
| You follow the same 3+ steps repeatedly | Create a skill |
| A multi-step process keeps losing state | Create a workflow template |
| User describes a recurring task | Create a scheduled task, not a skill |
Quality Check
Before creating a skill or workflow, verify:
- It captures a genuine pattern, not a one-off
- The description is specific enough for future discovery
- It doesn't duplicate an existing skill (check
/system/skills/first)