# Skills

> Skills are playbooks your helper reads before a kind of job, so it does that job the same careful way every time. You can save your own, too.

Section: Using 1Helm

## How skills work

Before a job a skill covers, your helper reads the skill first and follows it: the steps, the rules, and the checks the result has to pass before you see it. You don't have to ask for a skill. Just ask for the job.

## Built-in skills

| Skill | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Making files | Word documents, PDFs, slide decks, spreadsheets (with working formulas and charts), CSV, Markdown and web pages, or filling in and editing ones you have. It keeps the source, rebuilds the file fresh, and checks it before sharing: every page rendered, no leftover placeholders, no formula errors, nothing cut off. |
| Wide research | The same facts for many separate items, like the price, rating and return policy of 25 products, in one table. |
| Travel planning | Shaping a trip: where and when to go, a day-by-day plan, connections, transfers and entry rules, with what's decided kept apart from what's still open. |
| Booking | Flights, hotels, restaurant tables and event tickets, on the provider's own website. Prices and availability come only from a live page. Before the final button it shows you the exact option, date and time, the total and the cancellation terms, and waits for your yes. Payment goes through Link, up to $500, with your approval. |
| Shopping | Finding, comparing and buying real products: every requirement you gave first, prices from the product page itself, coupons only when they're proven to work, and Link for checkout. |
| Flight status | One exact flight on one date: delays, gates and cancellations from live sources and the airline's own page. It watches a flight for changes only when you ask. |
| Finding places | Restaurants, shops, trails, clinics and services near you or in a named area, checked against their own pages, with links that open in your map app. |
| Finding pictures | Real photos that are free to use, from openly licensed collections, each with its credit line. |
| Your photos | Finding your own photos in a channel by name, by when they were taken and by where. |
| Forgetting | Finding everything memory holds about something and deleting it after your yes. See [Forgetting something](https://1helm.com/docs/memory/#forgetting-something). |
| About itself | Answering what it can do, what it knows about you, what's connected and what's scheduled, from what it can actually check. |

These skills use [live search](https://1helm.com/docs/computer/#live-search) for flights, hotels, places and products, plus web search, the websites themselves and your helper's browser. Prices and availability always come from a live result or page, never from memory.

## Your own skills

Did something come out just right? Say "save this as a skill" or "remember how to do this every time", and your helper saves the way it did it as one of that channel's own skills. It reads that skill before doing the same kind of job again.

- A saved skill belongs to the channel it was saved in.
- Your helper saves, changes or deletes one only when you ask.
- Saved skills aren't listed in the app yet. Ask "show me the report skill" and your helper shows it in the chat.

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Web page: https://1helm.com/docs/skills/