This section covers how you connect an agent to your own systems, and how you teach it reusable expertise it can draw on.
Overview
Tools are actions the agent can call while it reasons — connector operations, MCP servers, custom HTTP endpoints, or a workflow exposed as a tool. They let the agent do something in your real systems: create a ticket, look up a record, run an automation. Skills are different — reusable expertise that shapes how the agent thinks and responds, pulled from a shared skill library and attached to any agent that needs that know-how, without giving the agent anything new to call.
What's in This Section
Topic | Covers |
|---|---|
Tools and Actions | Adding connector actions, MCP servers, and custom endpoints; approval, rate limits, and what happens when a tool call fails. |
Agent Skills | Attaching reusable skills from the skill library, and how they're loaded at runtime. |
Do vs. How
A simple way to keep them apart: a tool is something the agent does; a skill is guidance on how it approaches doing it. Built-in abilities like web search live under Capabilities instead — see the Models & Capabilities section.