Skills capture individual capabilities your team has — the specific things you know how to do that Hamster Studio can reference when guiding your work.
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.
Hamster can reach for an active skill on its own when it fits the request.
When you already know which skill you want it to follow, invoke it directly in Chat: type /, choose the skill, and add your request. Hamster confirms the skill and starts gathering the context it needs to follow that approach.
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 — add it to that Method from the Method's Contents tab. Skills bundled with a library Method appear on your Skills page automatically when you enable the parent Method — see Methods Overview for the Methods Library.
Open the Skills tab — Select Methods in your workspace sidebar, then select Skills in the header. You see all skills currently in your workspace, displayed as cards or a table depending on your display preference.
Add a skill — Open the New skill menu and choose New skill. Give the skill a name, and optionally a description, version, category, and initial content.
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.
Edit a skill — Click a skill card to open it and write richer content in the editor. To change the title, description, or category, right-click the card and choose Edit.
Remove a skill — Right-click a card and choose Remove to delete the skill from your workspace permanently.
When a useful team practice emerges in Chat, ask Hamster to turn it into a reusable Skill. In a private chat Hamster creates it right away. In a shared chat it posts a review card instead: open it, check the draft, and click Create. Asking for a Method around the Skill works the same way.
Card and table views: Switch between a card grid and a compact table using the Display button. Your preference is saved per page.
Search and filter: Use the search field to find skills by title or description. Use the Category dropdown to narrow to a specific domain.
Group by: You can group your skill list by category, active/inactive status, or source (Hamster vs. Internal).
Sort order: Sort by newest, oldest, or alphabetically. The sort preference is saved per page.
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.
Template source indicator: Cards show whether a skill came from a Hamster-provided template (globe icon), is a library skill bundled with a Method (Library badge), or was customized by your team (pen icon).
Hamster ships pre-built Methods through the Methods Library, and each library Method comes with a bundle of skills. When you enable a library Method for your account, every bundled skill automatically appears on your Skills page — no separate import step.
| State on the Skills page | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Library skill (parent Method enabled) | Read-only. Locked editor, Library badge. The skill is active and reachable by the AI. |
| Library skill (parent Method disabled) | Hidden from the Skills page. Re-enable the Method to bring it back. |
| Copied library skill | Your copy, marked Included from and the name of its Method. Fully editable. Lives under your account. |
To edit a library skill, save a copy of its parent Method with Save as my copy; see Enabling Versus Saving a Copy.
If a copied skill has the same name as a skill already in your workspace, Hamster renames the copy rather than blocking it.
If your skills already live as files, upload them instead of recreating them. From the Skills tab, click New skill and select Upload package, then choose a ZIP file (up to 50MB) or a local folder (up to 10MB). Each skill needs a SKILL.md file with a name and description.
You can import from a public GitHub repository. From the Skills tab, click New skill and select Import from GitHub, paste the repository URL, and click Scan repository. A repository with one SKILL.md folder imports as a skill; one with several imports as a Method with the skills you choose. To pull skills from a repository you've connected, including GitLab and Cursor Origin, choose Sync repo skills instead.
Imported skills are marked Customized by you, the same as skills you write yourself. You can edit imported skills to customize them for your team.
The hamster skills sync command keeps skills in your repository in sync with your Hamster workspace. Run it from your project directory to:
This is useful for teams that version-control their skills alongside code. The CLI compares file content and asset files, showing actionable Results sorted by what needs attention.
Each skill supports markdown frontmatter for structured metadata — title, description, and category. You can edit frontmatter directly in the built-in editor. Changes to the category field update the skill's categorization across the interface immediately.
Toggle a Method's switch on its card to enable or disable every skill assigned to it at once. Use its Contents tab to add or remove skills.