Built-in skills
Orion ships with built-in skills — instruction packages the assistant can load automatically or on demand with /skill-name. They teach the agent Orion-specific workflows: notebook UI, App View layouts, settings, metadata, sub-agents, custom skills, and chat history search.
This page is the hub. Each built-in skill has a longer user guide linked below with examples, file locations, and troubleshooting. Workspace skills with the same name override the built-in copy.
Built-in skill reference
| Skill | Slash command | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Create skill | /create-skill | Scaffold a new workspace SKILL.md under .agents/skills |
| Create sub-agent | /create-subagent | Author a reusable .agent.ipynb sub-agent notebook |
| Orion UI | /orion-ui | Build interactive notebook controls with Python orion_ui |
| Create app | /create-app | Lay out App View dashboards from notebook metadata |
| Orion metadata | /orion-metadata | Valid keys under metadata.orion in notebooks |
| Orion settings | /orion-settings | Read or change user and workspace settings JSON |
| Chat history | /chat-history | Search and summarize past Orion chats stored locally |
How built-in skills load
- Automatic — When your message matches a skill's description, the model may load it without a slash command (unless
disable-model-invocationis set on a workspace override). - Manual — Type
/orion-ui,/create-app, or any skill name in the chat slash palette. - Override — Place your own
SKILL.mdat.agents/skills/<name>/or.orion/skills/<name>/with the samenamein frontmatter to replace the built-in version for that workspace.
Built-in vs workspace skills
| Built-in | Workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Shipped with Orion | .agents/skills/<name>/ or .orion/skills/<name>/ |
| Updates | With Orion releases | You edit in the Jupyter workspace |
| Override | — | Same name replaces built-in |
See Skills for the full workspace skill format, precedence rules, and authoring checklist.
Related Orion features
Built-in skills map to product areas documented elsewhere:
| Feature | User guide |
|---|---|
| Interactive notebook UI | Orion UI (orion_ui) · Component reference |
| Dashboard layout | App View · Style App View with CSS |
| Delegated workflows | Sub-agents |
| Settings files | Workspace settings |
| Skills not appearing | Jupyter hidden folders and skills |
When to ask the assistant
You do not need to memorize skill names. Plain-language requests work:
- "Create a skill for our quarterly report workflow" → loads create-skill
- "Add sliders to this notebook" → loads orion-ui
- "Turn this notebook into a dashboard" → loads create-app (and often orion-ui)
- "What did we decide about the data pipeline last week?" → loads chat-history
- "Pin Gemini as the default model for this repo" → loads orion-settings
If a skill does not appear in the slash palette after you add workspace files, reconnect the Jupyter kernel or reload Orion.
Related
Last updated May 2026.