Custom skills for the Figma agent and Figma Make

Skills let you package a repeatable workflow into a reusable set of instructions for an AI agent. Instead of rewriting long prompts and re-explaining conventions each time, a skill gives an agent a stable sequence of steps to follow, which improves consistency across runs. Fundamentally, skills are Markdown files that follow the Agent Skills specification. 

Everywhere the Figma agent is supported, such as Figma Design and Figma Make, custom skills enable the agent to perform tasks that ease how you work, like reviewing content or checking a UI against your team’s design standards. Once installed, a skill can be invoked explicitly with a slash command such as /follow-ds-guidelines or /design-crit. You can create a custom skill manually in the chat sidebar or upload a Markdown file for your existing skill.

Paired with connectors, skills can pull live context from the tools your team already uses, so a single skill can fetch your design system from Notion, your PRDs from Drive, and apply both to whatever you're building.

The results you get using custom skills with the Figma agent should very often be consistent. However, because the models that power the agent are inherently non-deterministic, the result may not be exactly the same each time you use the skill.

Create a custom skill

Custom skills are created in the chat sidebar for the agent and in Figma Make. Though you create custom skills while in a new or existing file, your custom skills stay available across all files. There are two ways to create a custom skill:

• Prompt the agent to write a skill
• Upload an existing skill
• Manually write the skill using Markdown

Prompt the agent to write a skill

Another way to create a skill is to ask the Figma agent or Figma Make to write it for you. Describe the task you want to repeat, and the agent turns your description into a skill you can reuse.

Here are a few ideas for what you can ask:

• “Take this conversation we just had and turn it into a skill.” Use this when you’ve worked through a workflow with the agent and want to reuse it later without repeating the entire conversation.
• “Summarize my [accessibility/design-review/etc] prompts into a skill." Use this when you have prompts or notes you keep reusing, and want the agent to distill them into one skill.
• “Revise the attached skill.md file to fit my design system.” Use this when a teammate shares a skill with you or you download one from the Community, but want to adapt it to better your own project.
• “Merge these two skills together.” Use this when you have two related skills with overlapping steps and want one skill instead of two.

Keep these in mind when writing your skill:

• Use active, unambiguous language to describe when to use the skill. This is especially important if a skill is to be invoked automatically so that it can reliably do so. Soft phrasing like "use only when X is selected" tends to get read as "don't use it unless X," not "you must use it whenever X is true." Phrase the trigger condition as a requirement rather than a restriction so it fires reliably.
• Use a specific, non-generic name if you plan on publishing it. Avoid generic names like "design-critique" since another author might already use the same name. A simple addition of your name, team, or company is an easy way to avoid clashes.

Upload an existing skill

If you have existing skills outside Figma that you want to use with the agent or in Figma Make, you can upload those skills. The skill must be a single Markdown (.md) file that follows the Agent Skills specification. Custom skills do not support optional directories such as scripts/, references/, and assets/, which might sometimes be packaged with an agent skill.

To upload a skill:

1. In a chat, click in the prompt box.
2. Select Skills, and then Add skill.
3. Drag in a skill file or click Upload a file.
4. Select the skill Markdown file you want to upload.
5. Review the name, description, and content of the uploaded skill. The name defines the slash command you'll use to invoke your skill.
6. Click Add.

After your skill is created, you're ready to start using it.

Create a skill manually

You can create skills manually in Figma. You'll need to provide a name, description, and the instructions that teach the agent what to do when using the skill. You can use Markdown to format the instructions.

To create a skill manually:

1. In a chat, click in the prompt box.
2. Select Skills, and then Add skill.
3. Click Start from scratch.
4. Enter the name, description, and instructions for the skill. The name defines the slash command you'll use to invoke your skill.
5. Click Add.

After your skill is created, you're ready to start using it.

Use custom skills

After you've created your custom skills, you're ready to start using them. 

To use a skill with the Figma agent or in Figma Make, you must invoke the skill. Invoking the skill manually ensures the agent uses it during a step in a conversation. To invoke a skill, enter slash commands in the prompt box. The chat will display a handful of skills available to you. 

If you want to view full list of skills available to you, from the chat click Add context > Skills > Manage skills. From there, find the skill you want to use and take note of the name so you can invoke it from the chat.

Manage custom skills

After you've created custom skills, you may want to manage the skills. You can:

• Publish a skill to a team or organization
• Update a published skill
• Unpublish a skill
• Make changes to a skill's instructions
• Export a skill as a Markdown file
• Enable or disable a skill
• Delete a skill

To manage a skill:

1. In a chat, click Add context.
2. Select Skills, then Manage skills.

Publish a skill to your team or organization

After you create a custom skill, you may want to share the skill with others in your team or organization. To share the skill, you can publish it.

To publish the skill to a team or organization:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to publish.
2. In the upper-right corner, click More actions and then select Publish.
3. In the Publish to section, select Private. Then select the team or organization you want to publish the skill to.
4. Edit the name and description of the skill as needed. If you change the name while publishing, only other users will see the new name. Your version of the skill will retain the existing name.
5. Click Publish.

Publish a skill to the Figma Community

If you wish to share a skill publicly so that all Figma users can find it and use it, you can publish the skill to the Figma Community.

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to publish.
2. In the upper-right corner, click More actions and then select Publish.
3. In the Publish to section, select Community.
4. Every published skill will have its own page on the Community where users can go to learn more about your resource. You'll need to provide some information about your skill, which Figma will display on the skill’s Community page:
   • Thumbnail and other images: Add a thumbnail and up to 9 other images of your skill. These will be added to a media carousel on the skill’s Community page. The recommended dimensions for images are 1920 x 1080. You can use the Community file cover frame preset to create a frame of the correct size.
   • Name, tagline, description, and category: These will help users find your resource and understand how it works.
   • Additional contributors: You can add other creators to the skill’s Community page. This is a great way to recognize other contributions to the skill. To add someone as a creator, they must have a Figma Community account, and can view or can edit access to the original file.
   • Support contact: Provide an email address or website where users can go to get help using your resource.
5. Click Publish.

Update a published skill

After publishing a skill, you may want to update make changes to the skill and share those changes with others. To share the updates, you can publish the changes to your skill.

To publish changes to a skill:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the published skill you want to update.
2. In the upper-right corner, click and then select Manage skill.
3. Click Publish changes.
4. Edit the name and description of the skill as needed. If you change the name while publishing, only other users will see the new name. Your version of the skill will retain the existing name.
5. Click Publish.

Unpublish a skill

After publishing a skill, you may want to unpublish it. Unpublishing a skill retains the skill for your use, but makes it unavailable to others in the team or organization where it was previously published.

To unpublish a skill:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to publish.
2. In the upper-right corner, click and then select Manage skill.
3. Click Unpublish skill.

Edit instructions

After you create a custom skill, you may want to edit the instructions. This is useful for iterating the functionality of the skill as you use it.

To edit the instructions of a custom skill:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to edit.
2. In the upper-right corner, click and then select Edit.
3. Edit the name, description, and instructions for the skill as needed.
4. Click Save.

Export skill

After you start using custom skills, you may want to export a skill so you can use it with your own agents.

To export a custom skill:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to export.
2. In the upper-right corner, click and then select Export.

Enable or disable a skill

If you want to temporarily stop a skill from appearing in the list of skills without deleting it, you can turn the skill off. At any time you can turn the skill back on again following the same steps. When a skill is disabled, it cannot be invoked automatically in chat or directly.

To turn a custom skill off or on:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to turn off or on.
2. In the upper-right corner, click the Disable skill toggle.

Delete a skill

If you're no longer using a skill, you can delete it. When you delete a custom skill, it is permanently removed. That means if you've made changes to a skill you uploaded or created a skill manually, your instructions will be lost. If you want to delete a skill but preserve the instructions, make sure you export the skill first.

To delete a custom skill:

1. In the Manage skills modal, select the skill you want to delete.
2. In the upper-right corner, click and then select Delete.

Known issues

Currently, there are some known issues to keep in mind while you're creating and working with custom skills.

• If you mention multiple skills in a single prompt, only the first skill used will be invoked.
• Figma Make only supports standalone skill files when you're uploading skills. You can't include additional files for the skill.
• In Figma Make, when you switch models during a session, you can't immediately invoke a skill in the first prompt that follows. Invoking skills in subsequent prompts after the first works as expected.