Teach a Task by Doing It
The problem this solves
Some tasks are almost impossible to describe and trivial to demonstrate. "Download this week's invoices from the vendor portal" is four clicks you could do in your sleep and a page of instructions nobody can write correctly — the menu is unlabelled, the date filter is a custom widget, the download button appears only after a row is selected.
So don't describe it. Do it once. AI Partner watches, writes down what you did, works out which parts change from run to run, and hands you a named skill you can run any time — or hang off a job so it runs itself.
Teach a task
Go to Build → Skills Manager and click ● Teach a task. A browser window opens with a recording panel on the right.
- 1Say what the task should achieve
One sentence of intent — "Download this week's invoices from the vendor portal as PDFs". This is what the skill gets matched on later, so write it the way you'd ask for it.
Optionally give a start page so recording begins where the work begins.
- 2Start recording, and just do the task
Click ● Start recording and work normally. You're in your cloud browser — the one where your sign-ins are already kept — so you're probably already logged in to the portal.
Steps appear in the panel as you go, described in words, so you can see it's following you.
- 3Press Done
AI Partner turns the recording into a draft skill: a name, the steps, and the parameters it spotted.
- 4Review, test, activate
The draft appears in Skills Manager. Check it, test it, and activate it. Until you do, it won't run on its own.
Passwords and one-time codes are never recorded. If a run hits a sign-in step, it comes back to you for that step instead — unless the cloud browser is still signed in, in which case it simply carries on. A skill can never replay your credentials, because it never had them.
What it works out for you
When you press Done, the draft tells you what it believes changes each run — and what you used this time:
Draft saved
download-vendor-invoices
6 steps · run it as /skill download-vendor-invoices once activated
Changes each run:
period — which week's invoices to fetch (you used "this week")
format — the download format (you used "PDF")
That's the difference between a recording and a skill. A recording does exactly what you did, once. A skill knows that "this week" was a choice, so next month you can ask for a different one.
Running a taught skill
| How | When to use it |
|---|---|
/skill <name> in chat | You want it now, with this run's values |
| Just ask for it in plain language | The intent you recorded is matched against what you asked |
| A wake on a job | It should run on a schedule, on an incoming email, or before a meeting — without you |
Because a taught skill replays known steps rather than working the page out from scratch, it is dramatically faster and steadier than asking the agent to navigate the site fresh each time.
Keeping a skill working
Sites change. Skills Manager shows each taught skill's state so you find out before it matters:
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| draft | Recorded, not yet activated. Won't run on its own. |
| active | Live and runnable. |
| needs re-teach | It has been failing. The site has probably moved. |
Alongside them you see how many times it has run and its current failure streak — the two numbers that tell you whether to trust it.
When one goes stale, click re-teach on that skill. You do the task once more and the new recording replaces the old steps, keeping the same name — so everything pointing at that skill, including any job wake, keeps working.
A sign-in prompt appearing mid-run is not a broken recording. The skill pauses for the one step only you can do and then continues.
Take Control — stepping in mid-run
The same window has a second job, unrelated to teaching: taking the wheel while the agent is working in a browser.
When AI Partner needs something only you can do — a login, a CAPTCHA, a payment confirmation, a choice it shouldn't make on your behalf — it stops and offers you the browser. You can also grab it at any time with Take Control.
You click and type directly in the live page. A crosshair cursor shows control is yours, and the agent waits — it does not act underneath you.
You watch the live page with a red dot marking where the agent is about to click, so its next move is visible before it happens.
Click Release Control (or close the window) to hand the browser back and let the run continue from where it paused.
Closing the window during a recording discards it — the footer says so while recording is live. Press Done first if you want to keep what you've demonstrated.
Taught skills vs. learned skills
Both end up as named skills you can run. They're created in opposite directions.
| Taught (this page) | Learned | |
|---|---|---|
| Created by | You demonstrating a task once | AI Partner succeeding at a goal on its own |
| Made of | A sequence of browser actions | A reusable script |
| Best at | Sites with no API — portals, dashboards, legacy web apps | Data work: fetches, transforms, file generation |
| You approve it | Yes — a draft until you activate it | Reviewed in Learned Skills |