Vellum Skills Catalog

You can help the user discover what skills are available and find community skills to extend the assistant's capabilities.

Bundled skills (first-party)

First-party skills are bundled with the assistant - they are compiled in and always available. They do not need to be installed or downloaded. To activate a bundled skill, use the skill_load tool:

skill_load skill=<skill-id>

The skill catalog shown in the system prompt lists all bundled skills with their IDs. When a user asks about capabilities, refer to this list to find relevant bundled skills and load them as needed.

Community skills (skills.sh)

Community skills are published on the skills.sh registry and can be searched, inspected, and installed on demand using the assistant skills CLI.

Searching for community skills

assistant skills search "<query>"

Returns matching skills with their slug, source, install counts, and security audit badges. Use this when the user asks for a capability not covered by bundled skills.

Installing a community skill

Trust model - check the source guardian before installing:

• Vellum-owned (vellum-ai/*): First-party skills published by the Vellum team. Install these directly without prompting - they are vetted and trusted.
• Third-party (any other guardian): Ask the user for permission first. Present the skill name, source, audit results, and install count. Say something like: "I found a community skill that could help, but it's published by a third party - we haven't vetted it. Want to install it anyway?"

assistant skills add <owner>/<repo>@<skill-name>

For example:

assistant skills add vercel-labs/skills@find-skills

Once installed, the skill appears in the workspace skills directory and can be loaded with skill_load like any other skill.

Typical flow

1. User asks about capabilities - "Can you order food?" or "What can you do?"

   • Check the bundled skills list in the system prompt
   • Present relevant skills to the user
   • Load any that match with skill_load

2. User wants a capability not covered by bundled skills - "Can you do X?"

   • Search with assistant skills search "<query>"
   • Present matching results with descriptions, install counts, and audit badges
   • Check the source guardian to determine trust level (see trust model above)
   • Install with assistant skills add <owner>/<repo>@<skill-name>
   • Load it with skill_load

3. Skill has dependencies - if includes lists other skill IDs, load those first with skill_load

Notes

• Bundled skills are always available and do not need installation
• Community skills are installed to the workspace skills directory
• After installing a community skill, it is auto-enabled and immediately loadable
• Skills can be enabled or disabled via feature flags without uninstalling them
• Never install third-party community skills without explicit user confirmation