Getting started with skills in Notion

If you’ve ever pasted the same context into AI more than once, you’ve probably found something worth turning into a skill. Maybe every project doc needs the same structure, or there’s a prompt you keep coming back to because it gets the job done just right.

A skill turns that repeated know-how into a reusable way of working.

In Notion, a skill is a set of instructions for a specific type of work. You define the approach once, and your agents can follow it whenever that kind of work comes up.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand what skills are and where to find them

• Build your first skill

• Use skills with Notion Agent and Custom Agents

• Use skills with supported local agents outside Notion

• Organize and share skills with your team

A skill is a Notion page that teaches AI how to handle a specific type of work. Add the goal, steps, standards, examples, or output you want it to follow, then use it whenever that work comes up.

And because the skill lives in Notion, it sits where your team already works together. It can draw on the context in your workspace, and your team can maintain it there too.

The quickest way to use a skill is to type / in Notion Agent chat. Choose a skill that’s already available to you, or create a new one with the + icon.

You’ll also see a few Notion-default skills for common tasks like translating, summarizing, proofreading, and improving text.

When you’re ready to run your skill, you can select it yourself or let Notion Agent choose it automatically when it fits your request.

The best skills usually come from work that already has a pattern. Think about the tasks you regularly use AI to help with. Maybe you give it the same context, ask for the same structure, or expect the output to include the same things each time.

A few patterns to look for:

• A format or voice you come back to: Writing launch updates in your team’s format or applying your brand voice to campaign copy.

• A set of standards you regularly apply: Checking a client proposal against the same quality standards.

• A repeatable way of turning one thing into another: Turning a long page into a concise summary.

• A process you follow step by step: Analyzing a funnel, conducting research, or working through a recurring planning exercise.

Once you know what you want to turn into a skill, you don’t have to build it from scratch. Tell Notion Agent how you normally do the work, and it can help turn that approach into a skill.

To get started, type / in Notion Agent chat and select +. Or simply say, “I want to create a skill.” Notion Agent will guide you from there.

As you describe the task, share the same context you’d normally give to get a good result. That helps Notion Agent shape the skill around how you work.

A strong skill makes your way of working clear enough for an agent to follow. Keep it focused on one kind of work.

For example, you might build a skill that turns messy customer call notes into a proposal. Your skill might include:

• The goal: What the skill should accomplish. Here, that’s turning raw call notes into a client-ready proposal.

• The inputs: What the agent should work from, such as call notes, customer priorities, and pricing details.

• The rules: The standards it should follow, including your usual sections, tone, terminology, and length.

• Examples: A few proposals that already meet your standards, so the agent can see what good looks like.

• The output: What you want back. In this case, a complete proposal in your standard format, ready for review.

Every skill page comes with a few built-in properties: Description and Files.

• Description explains what the skill does and when to use it. This allows your Notion Agent to know when to use it once automatic use is turned on.

• Files holds supporting material the skill can work from, like examples, reference documents, images, data files, or scripts.

Once everything looks good, put your skill to work on a real task.

Your skills library is where you can view and manage the skills available to you.

Open it from the Library icon in your sidebar or from the / menu in Notion Agent chat. From here, you can see the skills you’ve created, along with others available to you. Any skill you create is already enabled for you.

To find more skills, open the Discover tab. You’ll see skills shared by Notion, your admin, or your teammates. When you find one you want to use, turn on Enable for me.

Skills can meet you where you’re working, so you can run a skill in different places:

• In Notion Agent chat, when you want to use it in a conversation

• On a Notion page, when you’re working directly with content

• Inside a Custom Agent, as part of a larger workflow

• In a local agent outside Notion, like Claude Code or Cursor, by downloading a copy

We’ll walk through each of these below.

Not sure where skills fit with the rest of Notion AI? This comparison table breaks it down.

With Notion Agent, you can select a skill yourself or let it pick one when it fits your request.

Say you have a skill called Project Brief Writer that turns rough notes into a clear project brief using your team’s usual structure. Type / in Notion Agent chat to select the skill, then point the agent to your notes and ask it to draft the brief.

If you use that skill often, you don’t have to manually select it every time. Give it a clear name and Description, and Notion Agent can recognize when it fits your request and use it automatically.

When a skill is used, you’ll see its name in the response. In full-page chat, it also appears in the knowledge sidebar alongside your other sources.

If you’re already working on a Notion page, you can use a skill right on the content you want to revise, review, or transform.

Highlight the text you want to work on, then choose a skill from the Editor menu.

A skill is great for one repeatable piece of work. But that piece might be just one part of a larger workflow. A Custom Agent can bring that skill into the larger workflow and use it for the part you want done a specific way.

For example, you might have a skill that turns customer interview notes into a research summary using your team’s usual format. A Custom Agent can use that skill to create the summary, then take the result and continue the workflow by sharing the key findings in Slack and adding the insights to your research database.

To use a skill with a Custom Agent, open the agent’s settings and give it access to the skill page under Tools and access, just like any other Notion page. Then explain in the agent’s instructions when to use the skill.

A skill can travel with you outside Notion too. If you use a supported local agent like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, or Grok, you can download the skill and use the same approach there.

Before you start, make sure you have the Notion desktop app and your preferred local agent installed on the same computer.

Select Download for local agents from the blue banner at the top of the skill page, then choose the local agents you want to download it to.

Notion saves the skill as a SKILL.md file in each agent’s skills directory. You can also download examples, reference documents, and other supporting material from the skill’s Files property.

Once it’s downloaded, open your local agent and use the skill there. For more detailed steps, check out this help doc →

• Enabling and downloading are separate actions: Turn on Enable for me to use a skill in Notion. If you also want to use it with a local agent, download a copy separately. Downloading doesn’t affect how the skill works in Notion.

• Download again when a skill changes: Downloaded skills don’t automatically stay in sync. If you update a skill in Notion, you’ll see an orange badge on the skill page. Download it again to bring the latest version to your local agent.

When you create a skill, Notion automatically adds it to a private skills database. A skills database is where you can organize and maintain your skills.

As you create more skills or start sharing them with your team, you can move them into other skills databases. You can have more than one, so teams can organize skills in a way that makes sense for them.

A marketing team, for example, might keep its writing, launch, and campaign skills together in one shared place. Group related skills, control who has access, and add properties that make them easier to find and keep up to date.

If you’re ready to bring skills to more of your workspace, check out our guide to organizing, sharing, and driving adoption across your team →

When you build a skill in Notion, it becomes part of the workspace where your team’s knowledge and work already live. Over time, the approaches that work best can become ways of working that your teammates and agents can use too.