📖What it means

Something an agent can perform, together with what triggers it: a chat action, an action in Carol's WhatsApp turn or a tool it reaches, a project chat tool, work one of its droids does on a schedule, an event or a request, or an action it may take on waking. A competency is read from the code that performs it, so an agent's competencies are what it can actually do, each with its trigger, who may use it and whether it can run now. The Agent Handbook lists every agent's competencies.

📖Easily confused with

[{"term": "Skill", "distinction": "A skill is a packaged procedure an agent loads and follows to do a recurring job well; a competency is something the agent can perform at all. A skill says HOW; a competency says WHAT the agent can do and what sets it off. An agent can hold a competency with no skill behind it, and a skill can serve many competencies."}, {"term": "Task", "distinction": "A task is the budgeted planning record for work a service track intends to do; a competency is an ability of one agent. Work done through a competency bills the task it serves."}, {"term": "Chat action", "distinction": "A chat action is one kind of competency: the ones an employee triggers from the agent's chat."}]

📖Nuance

Named by Ninad on 2026-09-17 (CLI-452). Graded daily from real attempts as fluent, proficient, learning, forgotten or ungraded.

📖Also called

- ability
- what an agent can do

📖Filed under

Category: governance.

Service: Agent and Human Resources.