Skills Overview
Skills capture individual capabilities your team has — the specific things you know how to do that Hamster Studio can reference when guiding your work.
Overview
A skill represents a focused, named capability: something like "User Story Writing," "Code Review," or "Journey Mapping." Skills are discrete — they do not branch into sub-documents. They carry a title, a description, a category, and an active or inactive state.
When you add skills to your workspace, Hamster Studio builds a picture of what your team is capable of. That context feeds into the AI assistant when it helps you plan work, write briefs, or think through delivery. The more accurately your skills reflect what your team does, the more relevant the guidance you get back.
Skills are separate from Methods but can be linked to one. If a skill belongs to a broader process — for example, "Wireframing" belonging to a "Design Sprint" method — you can associate them during creation.
This feature may need to be enabled for your workspace.
How It Works
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Open the Skills tab — Navigate to Skills in your workspace sidebar. You see all skills currently in your workspace, displayed as cards or a table depending on your display preference.
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Add a skill — Click "Add Skill" to open the creation dialog. You give the skill a title, an optional description, an optional category, and an optional method association. You can also start from a template via the Library tab, which pre-fills the title, description, and category for you.
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Activate or deactivate — Each skill card has a toggle switch. Active skills are available to Hamster Studio; inactive ones are stored but not referenced. New skills default to active.
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Edit a skill — Click on a skill card to open its full document view, where you can write richer content using the editor. You can also open the edit dialog from the card's overflow menu to update the title, description, or category. If a skill was added from a template, editing it creates your own customized version.
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Remove a skill — Use the overflow menu on any card to remove a skill from your workspace permanently.
Key Capabilities
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Card and table views: Switch between a card grid and a compact table using the Display button. Your preference is saved per page.
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Search and filter: Use the search field to find skills by title or description. Use the Category dropdown to narrow to a specific domain.
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Group by: You can group your skill list by category, active/inactive status, or source (Hamster template vs. your own custom entry).
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Sort order: Sort by newest, oldest, or alphabetically. The sort preference is saved per page.
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Category labels: Each skill can be assigned one of six categories — Product, Ops, Experience, Development, Marketing, or Workflows. Categories are color-coded throughout the interface.
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Method association: When creating a skill, you can link it to an existing method. The skill then shows a "Linked Method" badge in its detail view.
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Template source indicator: Cards show whether a skill came from a Hamster-provided template (globe icon) or was customized by your team (pen icon).
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Recommendations: When you have fewer than eight active skills, the page surfaces a "Recommended" section showing templates from categories you already use.
Tips
- Start by adding skills from the Library rather than from scratch. Templates provide a consistent description and the correct category, saving you time.
- Deactivate skills that no longer reflect how your team works rather than removing them. That way you preserve the history without cluttering the active list.
- If your team uses skills differently from the template description, choose "Edit (create your version)" from the overflow menu. Your customized version replaces the template text for your workspace only.
- Use the Category filter when you want a quick audit of what is covered in a particular domain — for example, checking whether your Experience skills are complete before starting a design sprint.