Skills System — How Boo Learns

Overview

Boo's skills system is its core differentiator. Skills are not marketplace plugins or generic templates — they are organizational knowledge encoded as structured markdown files that Boo crafts from living inside your systems.

How Skills Work

1. Pattern recognition — Boo notices the team keeps asking the same type of question
2. Skill creation — Boo encodes the org's context, edge cases, and preferences into a skill
3. Organization-wide benefit — Next time anyone asks, Boo already knows the answer

SKILL.md Architecture

Skills are stored as SKILL.md files — structured markdown documents in a directory hierarchy. The filesystem provides natural namespacing:

.cursor/skills/crm/object-builder/SKILL.md

This approach has several advantages over traditional API integrations:

• Agent reasoning — The AI understands intent and context, not just function signatures
• Natural composition — Multiple skills can be active simultaneously, combined through reasoning
• Democratized authoring — Non-engineers can create and edit skills
• Natural language interface — With structured guidance, not rigid schemas

Skills can include additional reference files for complex procedures. Some capabilities require real code alongside the skill markdown — skills describe the high-level procedure and constraints, while code handles execution.

Private Skills

Private Skills are custom instructions or workflows specific to your workspace. They are:

• Not shared with other customers
• Created, edited, and deleted from the dashboard
• Isolated per workspace

Foundational Skills

Boo Lab has developed a concept of "foundational skills" that include agent identity and test account information. Other skills can reference these foundations. Some skills are generic and platform-agnostic (e.g., variants for Slack vs. Teams, New Relic vs. Datadog).

Agent Behavior Rules (Agent Bible)

Beyond skills, Boo has an "Agent Bible" in the boo-brain codebase that defines core behavior rules shipped to every customer deployment. These are distinct from org-specific memories:

• CTA reiteration rule: After completing work, always reiterate the main call-to-action with a well-formatted link
• Integration framing rule: Never lead with "it's not built in" — lead with what Boo CAN do

The key process: identify a behavior pattern → add to agent bible → ship via PR → applies to all deployments.

Skills Development Status

Active skill development is tracked in Linear with the "Viktor" label. Skills with open PRs include pdf_creation, text-to-speech, and scheduled_crons. Skills in development include file-to-markdown, video-generation, workflow_discovery, slack_admin, and subagents.