Overview

Custom Skills let you teach Bolt Agents how to handle institution-specific scenarios that do not fit neatly into a built-in system skill. A well-written Custom Skill gives the agent a clear trigger, a focused goal, and specific instructions for what to do next.

The best Custom Skills are narrow, testable, and easy to troubleshoot. Instead of trying to solve many scenarios in one large skill, build smaller skills that each handle one job and use priority ordering to control which skill runs first.

Below, we will cover:

How to structure a strong Custom Skill
How to write clear triggers and actions
How to use availability and priority controls
How to test and improve skills before publishing
Common patterns to follow when building your first skills

Start with one clear job per skill

Each Custom Skill should handle one specific student intent or operational scenario. If a skill tries to do too many things, it becomes harder to test, harder to prioritize, and harder to understand when something does not work as expected.

Good Custom Skill examples include:

Campus Visit Scheduler
Financial Aid Inquiry Handler
After-Hours Voice Routing
Mental Health Support Routing

Avoid using one broad skill for many unrelated scenarios, such as admissions questions, campus visits, scholarships, and counselor routing all in the same action.

✨ Pro Tip: If the skill name needs the word "and" to explain what it does, consider splitting it into two skills.

Write the trigger around student intent

The Trigger tells the agent when the skill should activate. Write the trigger in plain language based on what the student or family member is asking for, not based on internal team terminology.

Strong triggers describe the user's intent clearly:

"Prospective student or family member asks about visiting campus, taking a tour, attending an open house, joining an information session, or seeing the campus before applying or enrolling"
"Student asks about scholarships, FAFSA, tuition, financial aid, or how to pay for school"
"Caller asks to speak with a person, admissions counselor, financial aid counselor, or live team member"

Weak triggers are vague or too broad:

"Student has a question"
"Admissions help"
"Campus information"

Use availability for hard rules

Use Availability when a rule must be enforced before the agent evaluates the trigger. Availability controls are deterministic, meaning the skill is skipped when the conversation does not match the selected channel or schedule.

Use Channels when the skill should only run on specific communication channels, such as Messenger, SMS, Email, Voice, or WhatsApp.

Use Restrict by schedule when the behavior should change by time of day, such as routing calls to a live team during business hours and creating a callback task after hours.

🚨 Important: Do not rely on the trigger text to enforce strict channel or schedule rules. If a skill should only run on Voice, select Voice in Channels and deselect the other channels.

Write actions as step-by-step instructions

The Action tells the agent what to do after the skill fires. Use clear instructions that describe the goal, the decision path, and the exact action the agent should take.

A strong action includes:

A clear goal
A short sequence of steps
Rules for deciding which path to take
Instructions for what not to do
Deterministic tools where needed

For example, a campus visit skill can tell the agent to:

Ask whether the student wants a campus tour, open house, virtual information session, or another visit option
Use Register for Event when the student wants to attend a configured visit event
Use Schedule Appointment when the student wants a one-on-one visit or counselor meeting
Use Create Task when the student asks for a special request, accessibility accommodation, group visit, or unavailable date
Use Add Label after the student shows clear visit interest or completes a registration

Use tools for deterministic actions

When the agent needs to take a specific action, use the tool chips available in the Action editor. Tool chips give the agent an exact configured action instead of leaving it to infer what should happen.

Common tool patterns:

Tool Chip	Use When
Register for Event	The student wants to attend a configured event such as an open house, info session, or webinar
Schedule Appointment	The student wants a one-on-one meeting with a counselor, advisor, or staff member
Create Task	The request requires staff review, a special accommodation, or an unavailable option
Add Label	The conversation should trigger downstream segmentation, reporting, or workflow automation
Transfer Call	A Voice caller needs to reach a specific team or live person

🧠 Good to Know: Natural-language instructions tell the agent how to reason through the scenario. Tool chips tell the agent exactly what system action to take.

Put specific skills above general skills

When multiple skills could match a conversation, priority determines which active skill should run first. On the agent's Skills page, active Custom Skills can be reordered by dragging them into priority order.

A good priority strategy is:

Place high-risk or highly specific skills first
Place common intent-specific skills next
Place broad routing or general support skills lower

For example, place Financial Aid Inquiry Handler above a generic admissions support skill so financial aid questions are handled by the more specific instructions.

Test every skill before publishing changes

Use Test Agent before publishing changes to a live agent. The test console lets you simulate different channels and inspect the Debug Trace without creating real contact records or executing real actions.

A basic testing workflow is:

Save the Custom Skill
Enable the Custom Skill on the agent
Click Test Agent
Select a simulated channel, such as Messenger, SMS, or Email
Send a message that should trigger the skill
Open Debug Trace and confirm the correct skill matched
Send a message that should not trigger the skill
Confirm the skill is skipped for the right reason
Repeat on each enabled channel

📌 Note: The test console simulates behavior for the selected channel. Use it to validate skill logic before relying on the skill in live conversations.

Keep rules explicit

Rules help keep the agent from taking the wrong action. Add rules when there are known boundaries the agent should follow.

Useful rule patterns include:

Always identify the student's specific need before taking action
Always use a configured tool when the student asks for that action
Never invent dates, times, availability, requirements, deadlines, or staff commitments
Never register or schedule a student until they clearly confirm the option they want
Create a task when the request requires staff review

💡 Use Case: A campus visit skill can tell the agent to never invent event availability. If a student asks for a date that is not available, the agent creates a staff task instead of promising a visit time that has not been configured.