Skills

A skill is a reusable playbook for Para: when to apply it, which steps to follow, what rules to enforce, and what the finished work product should look like. Use skills for repeatable deliverables such as weekly status reports, meeting follow-ups, vendor reviews, or research briefs.

Unlike a one-off prompt, a great skill is not written in a vacuum. It is honed through a feedback loop: run real project documents, redline the draft with your team, and explicitly ask Para to save those corrections in the playbook for future assignments. Ask to see the saved instructions before relying on them. Start with the task’s inputs and expected output, use the skill to guide the work, and review the finished deliverable before reusing the approach.

The skill iteration flywheel

Nobody writes a flawless playbook on the first try. Treat the first two or three iterations as a chance to make your organization’s standards concrete, not a guarantee that the next draft needs no review. Test run → Redline → Coach Para → Verify → Share with the team when ready.

1. 1

   Test against real files

   Start with an actual document: a meeting transcript, a vendor questionnaire, or a report. Name the source files and the deliverable: “Draft an initial review of this security questionnaire, focusing on answers that lack supporting evidence. Deliver a Word document.”

2. 2

   Redline the output with your team’s feedback

   Review the first draft as you would a colleague’s work. Did it miss source references? Was the narrative too conversational or unfocused? Did it lump several controls together instead of taking them one at a time? Did it speculate where the documents were ambiguous? Note specific corrections.

3. 3

   Tell Para to update the playbook

   Paste your feedback into conversation and explicitly ask to save it for future assignments: “Update my vendor-security-review skill: every answer needs a citation to the document and page that supports it, and answers with no evidence belong in a standalone callout. Flag missing page numbers rather than inventing them. Show me the revised saved instructions.” Ask separately to revise today’s draft if you need that too.

4. 4

   Verify on the next project

   Run the updated skill on a different document: “Use my updated vendor-security-review skill on the Brightline questionnaire.” Check the citations, structure, and finished file against the saved rules. Once the approach holds up on several assignments, ask an owner or administrator to publish it as a Team skill using the steps below.

Walkthrough: dialing in a vendor review playbook

This illustrative exchange shows how a procurement lead and a security reviewer can refine a skill over two turns, then verify it on a later assignment. Send Para the questionnaire and the vendor’s audit report first so it can work from the source documents.

In this example, Para delivers a four-page narrative summary, but references are vague (“see report”) and the gaps are buried in paragraphs. The review identifies what to change, rather than simply asking for a better summary.

Check both the revised Acme document and the saved playbook. A confirmation alone is not enough: ask to see the saved vendor-security-review instructions, confirm that the skill is personal, and check its scope and rules against this list:

• Start with Open risks, comparing the vendor’s answers with the supplied audit report and asking for missing sources.
• Structure the review as a Control, Vendor answer, Evidence, and Gap table.
• Cite the document and page for each piece of evidence; flag unavailable references and separate the vendor’s claims from what the evidence shows.
• Deliver a Word document named for the vendor under review, not a fixed name copied from this example.

On the next assignment, ask: “Use my vendor-security-review skill on the Brightline questionnaire and audit report.” Review the new file against those rules. If something still misses the mark, give Para the specific correction and ask it to show the updated saved skill again.

Useful coaching prompts

You can inspect, refine, or audit personal skills directly in conversation. For a shared Team skill, ask Para to propose revisions, then have an owner or administrator save them on the Skills page.

• Audit the current logic: “Show me the exact saved rules and instructions for my meeting-follow-up skill, and explain when you would apply it.”
• Incorporate redlines: “Here is the edited Word document my manager marked up. Compare it to your initial output, identify where your draft deviated, and propose three new rules for the skill.” Review the proposal, then explicitly ask Para to save the approved changes.
• Set boundary rules: “Update my policy-review skill: if a policy has no named owner or review date, do not suggest one. Flag it explicitly as a Missing Required Field. Show me the saved change.”
• Retire or replace instructions: “Remove the requirement to convert currencies from my expense-summary skill. Finance now handles that in its own workflow. Confirm what you removed.”
• Stop using a personal skill: “Stop applying my vendor-security-review skill. Show me what saved instructions remain and confirm the change.”

Removing personal instructions does not erase conversation history or delivered documents. Check Team skills and automation prompts too if they contain the old rule. If a later result still follows it, ask Para which instructions it used and compare them with the saved playbook before making another change.

Anatomy of a production-grade skill

An effective playbook generally contains five sections. Keep reusable instructions here and the facts of a particular project in the assignment.

1. 1

   Trigger and scope

   Say exactly when Para should and should not use the skill. Example: “Use when asked to prepare a quarterly business review for a customer account. Do not use for internal team retrospectives.”

2. 2

   Required inputs

   Name the documents or fields Para must check before starting. Example: “Requires the account’s latest usage export and the previous review. If the export is more than 30 days old, pause and request a current one.”

3. 3

   Analytical steps

   Set out the methodology in order. Example: “First compare usage with the previous quarter. Next review open support issues. Third list renewal risks and expansion opportunities.”

4. 4

   Output format and styling

   Specify headings, tables, tone, citation syntax, and where the finished work belongs. Example: “Deliver a formatted .docx document. Begin with a one-page summary table followed by detailed analysis for each section.”

5. 5

   Edge cases and guardrails

   Explain how to handle ambiguity or missing information. Example: “Never infer missing dates. If handwritten notes are illegible, label them [Illegible - Requires Manual Review].”

Skill lifecycle: personal trial to team playbook

A personal skill does not automatically become a Team skill. Test the method on several projects, review it for organization-wide use, and remove the details of particular projects before publishing it. The Skills page is not an inventory of your personal skills.

Use a skill in an assignment

Describe the work you need and name the relevant project and documents. Para uses a skill’s description to decide when it applies. You can also name the skill in your request—for example, “Use our vendor-security-review skill on the Acme questionnaire and send me a Word document.”

On the Skills page, owners and administrators create, install, edit, and assign shared skills. Members can see the names and descriptions of enabled skills assigned to them. If a skill is missing, ask an administrator to check its audience and whether it is enabled.

Start with a marketplace workflow

The Workflow Marketplace contains ready-made playbooks you can install as skills. It comes with the case.dev plugin and appears as a tab on Skills once case.dev is installed on a Para in your organization.

1. 1

   Find a relevant workflow

   Open Workflow Marketplace and search for the kind of work you need. Open a result to review its instructions before installing it.

2. 2

   Choose who should use it

   In the preview, use Deploy to to choose Everyone or Specific groups and people, then select Install workflow. The quick Install button on a catalog card assigns the workflow to everyone in the organization.

3. 3

   Adapt it to your organization

   Return to Team skills and open the installed skill to edit its description, playbook, or audience. Review the instructions for your organization’s needs, save your changes, and try it on a suitable assignment.

Promote a personal skill to the team

Anyone can ask Para to export their personal playbook. Only an owner or administrator can publish it as a Team skill. To create a new Team skill from scratch instead, start at New skill and use the same name, description, playbook, and audience fields below.

1. 1

   Ask Para for the complete playbook

   “Output the complete name, description, and playbook for my vendor-security-review skill so I can share it with the team.” Review the exported instructions before publishing. You can also write a new playbook from scratch.

2. 2

   Select New skill

   An owner or administrator opens Skills, chooses Team skills, and selects New skill.

3. 3

   Name it and explain when to use it

   Use a short name with lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, such as weekly-status-update. In Description, state the task it covers and when Para should use it.

4. 4

   Write the playbook

   Set out the steps, required source material, how to cite sources, and output format. Say what Para should do when information is missing. Keep reusable instructions here and put the facts of a particular project in the assignment.

5. 5

   Choose the audience and save

   Under Deploy to, choose Everyone or Specific groups and people. Select Create skill and confirm the audience. Changes apply on each person’s next request.

Update or remove a skill

• Open a skill in Team skills to edit its instructions or audience, then select Save changes.
• Use Disable to stop making the skill available while keeping it for later. Use Enable to make it available again.
• Use Delete to remove the skill. Review the confirmation so you know who is affected.
• To change the audience for several skills together, select them and use Deploy. This replaces their existing audience selections.

Skills, service plugins, and automations

A skill defines how the work is done; service plugins give Para connected tools to do it; automations decide when scheduled work runs. A skill does not connect a service account, grant access to a project, or start work by itself. Give Para an assignment to use it, and connect any required services separately.

For another end-to-end example, follow the status update guide from a first draft to a corrected method and a later scheduled update. Working with Para over time explains personal guidance, project context, and shared skills.

• Open SkillsBrowse available skills or manage your organization’s playbooks.
• Service pluginsConnect the accounts Para needs to carry out work.
• AutomationsSchedule recurring assignments.
• Team and accessManage the people and groups you assign skills to.