Skill catalogue

A skill is a Markdown reference page the AI loads on demand. It is knowledge, not a button — it teaches HISAB how to do a kind of work, then the AI does that work with its normal tools. HISAB ships a built-in library, and you can add your own.

What a skill actually is

Each skill is a single Markdown file — a short reference document on one topic (how to format a report, how to write to a range, how to talk to a particular ERP, a VBA technique, and so on). It carries an optional YAML frontmatter header (name, one-line description, and an always_on flag) followed by the Markdown body.

Skills are not macros, YAML workflows, or Python modules — there is no main.py, no inputs/outputs contract, and nothing to "run". The body is loaded into the AI's context as guidance; the AI then carries out the task using the normal HISAB tools (reading and writing ranges, writing formulas, running Python in the sandbox, calling ERP connectors).

How HISAB uses them

You don't call a skill by name. You describe what you want in plain English, and the AI decides which reference pages it needs and loads them itself:

Build a trial-balance P&L on a new sheet and format it cleanly.

Behind the scenes the AI uses two MCP tools to work the library:

• list_skills — lists the available skills (name + one-line description), optionally filtered by a name substring.
• read_skill — loads one skill's body by its stem name (for example read_skill('excel-write')).

It loads a skill once when its topic is in play, then proceeds. Some skills are marked always-on: their body is injected into every prompt regardless of what you ask (for example the house formatting and tool-discipline rules), so you never have to ask for them.

The built-in library

HISAB's built-in skills are technique and reference docs rather than finance "recipes". They cover, among other things:

• Workbook work — writing ranges and formulas, professional report formatting, tables / pivots / charts, Excel shapes.
• Python sandbox — patterns and recipes for the bundled offline Python runtime.
• ERP connectors — per-platform guidance (Xero, QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books, Odoo, Generic OData, CSV folders) and the write-staging workflow.
• VBA & forms — authoring, auditing, form design, and the WebView2 / HTML form design system.
• Ribbon icons — the imageMso icon index and its category pages.
• Automations — how to build and save a reusable automation.

Most of these are system skills that HISAB's own code paths depend on. They stay hidden from the Skills tab so you can't accidentally delete one and degrade the AI — but the AI still sees every skill regardless. The exact list evolves between releases, so treat this as a description of the categories, not a fixed catalogue.

Browsing and editing

Open the Skills tab in the side rail. The list shows the skills you can edit (system-required skills are filtered out server-side). For each one you can:

• Search — the box filters the list by name, stem, or description.
• Read — click a skill to view its full Markdown body.
• Edit — open the editor to change the name, one-line description, the always-on flag, or the body.
• + New skill — create your own reference page.
• Delete — remove a skill; the AI stops seeing it on the next prompt.
• Refresh — reload the catalogue from disk.

Saved changes take effect the next time you send a message — no restart needed.

Where skills live on disk

Skills are flat Markdown files in %APPDATA%\HISAB\Skills\ — one .md file per skill, named after its stem (for example excel-write.md). On first launch HISAB seeds this folder with the built-in library; you can add files here directly, but the in-app editor is the easier path. The Settings tab shows the resolved folder path.

See Authoring skills for the frontmatter format and a walkthrough of writing one.