Skill Quality and Iteration

Writing descriptions that route reliably

You'll be able to

Diagnose a misroute and trace it to the Skill description
Iterate a description so the right requests trigger the right Skill

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Glean Assistant Skills (User Guide) · 10 min

Day 6 Lab

Collect a few requests where a Skill fired on the wrong prompt (a misroute).
For each, read the two descriptions that competed for it.
Tighten the "when to use" lines so their boundaries don't overlap.
Re-run the same requests and confirm they now route correctly.
Keep a short log of phrasing → routed Skill; that log is how you manage quality over time.

Working Example: Fixing a Misroute

A Skill that fires on the wrong request is almost always a description problem, not an instruction problem. Iterate the "when to use" lines until each Skill owns a clear band of requests. Verified against assistant_skills.

Misroute:
  "recap the launch sync"  → routed to "Release Notes Drafter"  (wrong)
                             wanted "Meeting recap"

Cause — overlapping descriptions:
  Release Notes Drafter: "when the user asks to summarize work"   ← too broad
  Meeting recap:         "when the user asks for a recap"

Fix — sharpen the boundary:
  Release Notes Drafter: "when the user asks to draft RELEASE NOTES from PRs"
  Meeting recap:         "when the user asks to recap a MEETING or sync"

Retest → "recap the launch sync" now routes to Meeting recap. ✓

Glean's framing is that Skills work "without prompt engineering"; in practice you still manage routing quality by iterating descriptions until the misroutes stop. Treat it as an ongoing loop: observe, sharpen the boundary, retest.

Check for understanding

You have two Skills that keep stealing each other's requests. What do you fix?

Check yourself

Pick an answer — you'll see if it's right and why.

1. What is a Glean Assistant Skill?

2. Who can invoke a Personal Skill?

3. When Glean auto-selects a Skill, what does it primarily match against?

4. Which gives you deterministic control over which Skill runs?

5. A Skill keeps firing on the wrong requests. What is the most likely fix?

Pass threshold 80% · week 5 quiz

In 10 seconds

“Skills aren't write-once. When one fires on the wrong prompt, the fix is almost always the description. Iterate it, retest, and watch the misroutes drop.”

Next · Week 5 Day 7
Power-User Capstone: Automate a Recurring Task

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