Manage Brief skills

Brief stores skills as documents in the Skills folder. A skill gives Brief instructions for a repeatable kind of work, such as a particular workflow or output format. Open a skill document to read its instructions. If you have edit access, you can change them. Built-in, integration, and team skills are kept in their respective folders under Skills.

Create a team skill

In Brief Chat, ask Brief to save a useful workflow as a skill, for example, “Save this as a skill for reviewing launch plans.” Review the proposed instructions and approve the save. The new skill appears in Skills and can be edited as a document. Give it a clear description of when Brief should use it, along with the steps and output you expect.

If you work from a terminal, brief skills list shows workspace skills and brief skills get <name> --out ./skill.md saves one to a file. A new Markdown skill file needs frontmatter with at least name and description; create it with brief skills create ./skill.md or brief skills create ./skill.md --subfolder Team. You can also use brief skills import <public-url> for a public skill file. See Brief CLI Setup before using these commands.

To edit a skill through the CLI, fetch it first, edit that file, then run brief skills update <name> ./skill.md --expected-version <version> using the version returned with the fetched content. This version check prevents a stale file from replacing a newer edit; it is required for every built-in skill you can customize, even if your workspace has not customized it yet. brief skills archive <name> archives a skill your workspace created or imported when you no longer use it. Built-in skills can return after archiving when Brief prepares skills for Chat, so do not use archive to disable a built-in skill. An integration skill cannot be archived while its integration is connected.

If an update reports a version conflict, fetch the latest skill again, compare your changes with it, and use the new version when submitting the revised file.

Review a built-in skill's versions

On a customizable built-in skill document, select Brief default or Customized, then See Details. Skill Versions shows the Brief Base, Organization Changes, and Resolved version that runs. The Organization Changes tab shows additions and removals compared with the current Brief base.

A workspace admin can select Reset to Brief’s Default, then Reset Skill to clear the organization's customization. The current Brief base becomes the version that runs, and the reset remains in the skill's history.

If Organization Changes says a saved customization did not apply, the skill is running Brief's default. An admin can reset the saved customization from the same menu. If Skill versions unavailable appears, reload the page and try again.

When a Brief update conflicts with your organization's edits, ask Brief Chat to show pending reviews for skills. You can keep your version, take Brief's update, or ask Chat to combine the two. For a combined version, have Chat show the current Brief base and your content first, then review the proposed full instructions before applying them. A conflict that has already been resolved may no longer appear in the pending list.

Speedrun Coach

The built-in Speedrun Coach skill uses the name speedrun-coach. An older copy that your organization edited may still show the earlier name a16z-speedrun.

For skills installed in an external coding agent, see Teach your coding agent to use Brief.