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FeaturesSidekickUpdated March 11, 2026

Introducing the Custom Skill Builder

Introducing the Custom Skill Builder

Released in v1.0.36

Sidekick now includes a built-in Custom Skill Builder — a guided editor that lets you create new agent skills from scratch, test them safely, and share them with the broader ClawHub community.

Overview

Skills define how your Sidekick agent behaves — what it monitors, what decisions it makes, and what actions it takes. Until now, skills came from ClawHub or from Sidekick's built-in library. With the Custom Skill Builder, you can define entirely new behaviours tailored to your own workflows.

Creating a Custom Skill

1. Open the Skill Builder

Navigate to Skills → Create Custom Skill from your Sidekick dashboard.

2. Write Natural-Language Instructions

Describe what you want the agent to do in plain English. The guided editor prompts you through the key parts of a skill definition:

  • Trigger — What should cause this skill to run? (e.g. a new email arrives, a GitHub PR is opened)
  • Behaviour — What should the agent do when triggered? (e.g. summarise and label the email, post a Slack notification)
  • Constraints — Any rules the agent should follow (e.g. only act on messages from specific senders)

Example:

When a pull request is opened on any of my GitHub repositories,
post a summary of the PR description and changed files to my #dev-reviews Slack channel.
Only run for repositories I own, not ones I've starred.

3. Select Required Integrations

Choose which connected services the skill needs access to. The picker only shows integrations you've already linked to your account. Selecting an integration grants the skill scoped read/write access based on what the integration supports.

4. Test in the Sandbox

Before enabling a skill on your live account, run it in the Skill Sandbox:

  • Provide a sample input (e.g. a mock email payload or a test GitHub event)
  • Step through the agent's reasoning
  • Inspect the proposed output or action
  • Iterate on your instructions until the behaviour is correct

Nothing executed in the sandbox affects your real accounts or connected services.

5. Enable the Skill

Once you're satisfied with the sandbox results, click Enable to activate the skill. It will run automatically whenever its trigger conditions are met.

Exporting to SKILL.md

Every custom skill can be exported as a SKILL.md file — the standard skill format used by OpenClaw and the ClawHub community.

To export:

  1. Open the skill from Skills → My Skills
  2. Click Export → Download SKILL.md

The exported file contains your natural-language instructions, integration requirements, and metadata in the standard format. You can:

  • Share on ClawHub — Publish your skill to ClawHub's directory so other Sidekick and OpenClaw users can import it
  • Version-control it — Commit SKILL.md to a repository alongside the project it supports
  • Import on OpenClaw — Because Sidekick is fully SKILL.md-compatible, skills travel freely between Sidekick and self-hosted OpenClaw instances

Notes and Limitations

  • Custom skills run under the same permission model as built-in skills. The agent can only take actions that the selected integrations permit.
  • Sandbox runs do not consume your monthly action quota.
  • SKILL.md files exported from Sidekick are compatible with OpenClaw and all ClawHub-listed runtimes.
  • You can edit a skill's instructions at any time. Changes take effect on the next trigger event.

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