Knowledge and skills

Tools let a node do things. Knowledge bases and skills change what a node knows. Both attach to a single node, and both keep the base prompt lean by loading only what a turn actually needs.

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Knowledge bases

A knowledge base is a collection of documents you want the agent to be able to look things up in. Create one under Knowledge, then add documents: paste notes, or upload PDF, Word, Markdown, or text files. Gradient splits each document into chunks and embeds them so they can be searched by meaning rather than exact words. Attach a knowledge base to a node and the node gains a search tool named search_kb_<name> that takes a query. When the model needs a fact, it calls the tool; the engine embeds the query, runs a similarity search over the base, and returns the top matching passages into the turn. Because retrieval happens on demand, the model pulls in only the passages it needs for the current turn instead of carrying every document in the prompt. That is what lets a knowledge base be far larger than a prompt could ever hold.

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Skills

A skill is a named, reusable block of instructions: a name, a short description, and the content itself. Create skills under Skills and share them across as many nodes as you like. Attach a skill to a node and two things happen:

• the node’s system prompt gains a short catalog entry, the skill’s name and description
• the engine gives the node a single use_skill tool

The model always sees the catalog, so it knows the skill exists. When the situation matches a skill’s description, the model calls use_skill with the exact name and the full content loads into that turn. Everything else stays out of the prompt until it is needed. This is how you keep a node’s base prompt small while still giving it deep, specific instructions for the cases that call for them: a refund policy, an escalation script, or a long disclosure the agent must read verbatim.

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Which to reach for

Both knowledge bases and skills are attached per node, so a handoff target can carry different knowledge and skills than the node before it. And both travel with the agent when you publish; the published version searches the same bases and loads the same skills it was published with.