Overview
Custom Skills are best for institution-specific scenarios where a Bolt Agent needs to recognize a particular type of conversation and follow a defined response path. They give teams more control than general agent instructions because each skill has its own trigger, availability settings, action instructions, and optional tools.
Use a Custom Skill when the behavior should be repeatable and tied to a specific student intent. Do not use Custom Skills as a catch-all replacement for Knowledge, system skills, agent settings, or workflows.
Below, we will cover:
When Custom Skills are the right fit
When to use Knowledge instead
When to use system skills instead
When to use Jobs or workflows instead
Common Custom Skill examples
Use Custom Skills for institution-specific scenarios
Use a Custom Skill when your team has a scenario that is specific to your institution and needs a defined response pattern.
Common examples include:
Routing students who ask about a specific program
Handling campus visit questions
Supporting scholarship or financial aid questions
Responding to athletic recruiting interest
Routing callers during business hours or after hours
Collecting information before creating a staff follow-up task
Adding a label when a student expresses a specific intent
💡 Use Case: Your admissions team wants any student who asks about visiting campus to be guided toward the right visit option. A Custom Skill can ask whether they want an open house, personalized tour, virtual session, or appointment, then use the right configured tool.
Use Custom Skills when behavior must be predictable
Use a Custom Skill when the agent should follow a specific sequence every time the same type of conversation occurs.
This is useful when the agent needs to:
Ask a required qualifying question
Use a specific tool
Route to a specific team
Avoid making promises about dates, availability, eligibility, or pricing
Add a specific label for reporting or automation
Create a follow-up task when the request cannot be completed automatically
Custom Skills are especially helpful when a general answer is not enough and the agent needs to move the conversation toward a defined operational outcome.
Use Knowledge when the agent only needs information
Use Knowledge when the agent needs to answer questions from approved content, such as policies, program pages, deadlines, or office information.
Use a Custom Skill instead when the agent needs to do more than answer, such as asking follow-up questions, registering for an event, adding a label, creating a task, routing the conversation, or applying channel-specific behavior.
Need | Use |
Answer a factual question from approved content | Knowledge |
Confirm a student's intent before taking action | Custom Skill |
Trigger a tool such as Register for Event or Schedule Appointment | Custom Skill |
Apply different behavior by channel or schedule | Custom Skill |
Surface program pages, office hours, or deadlines | Knowledge |
Explore More > Adding Knowledge Hub Sources
Use system skills for standard agent capabilities
Bolt Agents include native skills for common platform capabilities, such as inquiry flows, application actions, event registration, appointment scheduling, handoffs, and data access. Use native skills when the standard behavior already fits the job.
Use a Custom Skill when you need to control when and how those capabilities are used for a specific scenario.
For example:
Enable Register for Event as a native skill so the agent can use event registration
Create a Campus Visit Scheduler Custom Skill to decide when the agent should register someone for a specific open house or schedule a specific appointment type
Explore More > Bolt Agent Skills
Use Jobs for proactive outreach
Use Bolt Agent Jobs when your team wants the agent to start outreach proactively, such as contacting a segment of students with a campaign-like objective.
Use Custom Skills to control how the agent handles qualifying replies or student intent during the conversation.
For example:
A Job starts an outbound message about campus visit opportunities
A student replies that they want to attend an open house
The agent uses the active Custom Skill to guide the conversation and use the right registration or scheduling action
📌 Note: Custom Skills are designed around conversations. If a behavior depends on a student response inside a Job conversation, test that path carefully with the agent and confirm the skill triggers as expected.
Explore More > Creating a Bolt Agent Job
Use workflows when the process should continue outside the conversation
Use workflows when a downstream process should run after a person is identified or categorized. A Custom Skill can help start that process by applying a label, creating a task, or collecting information during the conversation.
A common pattern is:
The student expresses a specific intent
The Custom Skill confirms the intent
The Custom Skill uses Add Label
A workflow or segment uses that label for follow-up
Do not use Custom Skills for everything
Custom Skills are powerful, but they should stay focused. Avoid creating a Custom Skill for every possible question.
Do not use a Custom Skill when:
The agent only needs to answer from Knowledge
A native skill already handles the scenario correctly
The scenario is too broad to test reliably
The action depends on information that is not configured or approved
Your team has not decided what the correct process should be
🚨 Important: A Custom Skill should reflect a process your team understands. If the process is unclear, define the workflow first, then build the skill.