Context & Configuration

Configure your agent's behavior with custom instructions, skills, and tool settings.

Tip: Your agent can configure itself. Just say "Update your instructions to always respond in bullet points" or "Disable the web search tool" and it will use settings_manager to make the change.

Overview

The Context tab is where you shape your agent's behavior. It has three main areas:

Custom Instructions — Free-form text that acts as the agent's system prompt
Skills — Reusable instruction sets that teach the agent specific workflows
Tools Panel — Toggle individual capabilities on or off

Together, these define the agent's context window — the information and capabilities available to it during every interaction.

Custom Instructions

Custom instructions are free-form text that shapes the agent's persona, behavior, and approach. Think of them as a job description plus operating guidelines.

Writing Instructions

Click the Custom Instructions section in the Context tab to expand the editor. Write in plain language:

You are a senior data analyst. When given a research task:
1. Always start by searching for the most recent data
2. Cross-reference at least 3 sources
3. Present findings in a table format
4. Include source URLs for every claim
5. Flag any conflicting information

Communication style: concise, professional, data-driven.
Never make assumptions — ask clarifying questions when needed.

Tips for Good Instructions

Be specific — "Respond in 3 bullet points" is better than "Be concise"
Include examples — Show the agent what good output looks like
Define boundaries — Tell the agent what it should NOT do
Set priorities — If instructions conflict with a skill, which wins?

Instructions are saved automatically when you leave the field.

Skills

Skills are structured instruction sets — following the Open Skills Standard — that teach an agent how to perform specific tasks. They're the backbone of reliable, repeatable agent behavior.

Attached Skills

The Context tab shows all skills currently attached to the agent. Skills higher in the list get priority in the context window. If a catalog skill has been updated since it was attached, an "Update Available" indicator appears.

Attaching a Skill

Click Add Skill at the top of the skills section
The Skill Selector opens with:
- A category sidebar — Analytics, Communication, Creative, Engineering, and more
- A search bar — Find skills by name or description
- Skill cards showing name, description, and category
Click a skill to attach it to the agent

Each agent gets an independent copy of the skill. Changes to the catalog version don't automatically propagate — the agent sees an "Update Available" badge and can pull changes when ready.

Reordering Skills

Drag and drop skills to change their priority order. Skills higher in the list are injected earlier in the context window, giving them higher priority when instructions overlap.

Skill Actions

Each attached skill has several actions:

Action	What It Does
Update	Pull the latest version from the catalog (when an update is available)
Push to Catalog	Publish local changes back to the project's skill catalog
Sync from Files	Detect `SKILL.md` files the agent created in its sandbox and import them
Detach	Remove the skill from the agent (the catalog version is unaffected)

The Skill Lifecycle

Skills flow between agents and the catalog:

Catalog Skill → Attach to Agent (Copy)
  → Agent Modifies Locally → Push to Catalog
    → Other Agents Pull Update

Or the reverse — agents create skills from scratch:

Agent Creates SKILL.md in Sandbox
  → Sync from Files → Local Skill Instance
    → Publish to Catalog → Available to All Agents

The Context Bar

At the top of the Context tab, the context bar shows a visual breakdown of the agent's token usage:

Total context — How much of the model's context window is used
Instructions — Tokens consumed by custom instructions
Skills — Tokens consumed by attached skills (each skill shown separately)
System — Base system prompt tokens

This helps you understand how much context budget remains. If skills and instructions together consume too many tokens, the agent has less room for conversation history and task context.

Tools Panel

The Tools Panel lets you toggle individual agent capabilities on or off. Click any tool to enable or disable it:

Tool	Default	Purpose
`computer`	✅ On	Screen interaction — click, type, scroll, screenshot
`bash`	✅ On	Unrestricted terminal access
`web_search`	✅ On	Internet search
`read_url`	✅ On	Read web page content
`data_capture`	✅ On	Extract structured data into datasets
`data_management`	✅ On	Create/modify datasets and rows
`use_credential`	✅ On	Fill forms with stored credentials
`read_file`	✅ On	Access files from persistent storage
`download_to_sandbox`	✅ On	Transfer files into the sandbox
`list_emails`	✅ On	View inbox
`read_email`	✅ On	Read email content
`send_email`	✅ On	Send emails
`settings_manager`	✅ On	Read/update own configuration

Disabling tools is useful when you want to restrict an agent's capabilities — for example, turning off send_email if an agent shouldn't communicate externally, or disabling bash if you want to limit it to browser-only tasks.

How Context Flows to the Agent

When the agent receives a message, the full context is assembled in this order:

System prompt — Base platform instructions
Custom instructions — Your free-form text
Skills — Injected in priority order (top skill first)
Conversation history — Recent messages and tool results
Available tools — Only enabled tools are presented to the model

This means custom instructions and high-priority skills have the strongest influence on agent behavior.

Tips & Best Practices

Keep instructions focused — Use skills for specific workflows and instructions for general behavior
Watch the context bar — If you're using too many tokens on skills, the agent has less room for conversation context
Disable unused tools — Fewer tools means the agent is less likely to choose an inappropriate approach
Use skill priority — Put the most important skill at the top
Let agents create skills — When an agent develops a good workflow, ask it to save it as a SKILL.md for reuse

What's Next?

Credentials — Store secrets your agent needs for authentication
Datasets — Understand how agents capture and manage structured data
Runs & Scheduling — Automate agent execution with schedules

Actions & Sequences

Runs & Scheduling