Skills and automations
Turn repeatable work into reusable SOPs your agents run on demand or on a schedule — and understand where Skills live: system, agent, or space.
The second time you explain the same workflow to an agent, you've found a Skill. Skills capture how a job is done so you never re-explain it; Automations decide when it runs. Together they turn one-off instructions into reliable, repeatable SOPs — the difference between a helpful assistant and a real operation.
What a Skill is
A Skill is a reusable workflow — a packaged SOP an agent can call by name. It isn't another employee; it's a method the agent uses. Examples:
- Generate a PPT from an outline
- Rewrite a blog post for Xiaohongshu, LinkedIn, and video
- Run a competitive-research process
- Process and clean an Excel file
A Skill bundles its instructions, and may include scripts the agent runs inside its cloud computer.
What an Automation is
An Automation is a Skill (or task) on a schedule or trigger — run it every morning, every Monday, or on an event, with no one in the loop. Skills define how; Automations define when.
Skill = the SOP. Automation = the SOP, running on its own.
Where Skills live: scope
Every Skill has a scope that determines who can use it and how broadly it's shared:
| Scope | Lives in | Available to |
|---|---|---|
| System | Built into Buda | Every agent, everywhere — the standard toolkit |
| Agent | One agent's workspace | Just that agent |
| Space | A Space | Every agent in the Space |
Use agent scope for a workflow only one specialist needs, space scope to share an SOP across your team, and reach for system Skills for common capabilities that ship with Buda.
When to make a Skill
If a task happens once, just do it — don't package it. When a workflow keeps repeating ("every finished blog post becomes a Xiaohongshu post, a LinkedIn post, and a video script"), turn it into a Skill so any agent runs it the same way every time. Then attach an Automation if it should run on a schedule.
You can also install ready-made Skills from the Marketplace or author your own — see create a custom skill.
Related
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An agent's memory is just files — and they live in its Drive. Feed it your materials and it stops starting from zero: it remembers you, and gets more like you over time.
Credits and the billing model
How daily, monthly, and balance credit pools work, why they're shared per Space, and how usage is metered as your agents run.