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What skills are

Skills are toggles for opt-in capabilities an agent can use mid-conversation. The Actions tab on each agent surfaces the toggles directly: turn on Web Search and the agent can search the public web when your knowledge base doesn’t have the answer; turn on UI Highlighting & Navigation and it can highlight elements or navigate users through your app. Skills live on AI Agents > [Your Agent] > Actions, mixed in with the integration action cards on the same page.

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Available skill toggles

SkillWhat it lets the agent doDefault
Web SearchSearch the public web when your knowledge base doesn’t have the answer. Useful for fast-changing topics.Off
UI Highlighting & NavigationHighlight elements in your UI and navigate users to specific pages or buttons mid-conversation.Off
Other capabilities (knowledge search, ticket creation, voice, live help, integration actions) are wired up elsewhere, not as skill toggles. See the breakdown below.

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Knowledge Search (always on)

Knowledge search is not a toggle. Every customer-facing agent automatically gets the searchKnowledge tool wired into the chat runtime. Without it the agent would only have what’s in its instructions and the current context, which is usually not enough. What gets searched:
  • All URL sources you’ve added (crawled help center, docs site)
  • Uploaded files and internal docs
  • Help center articles (with include_in_training on)
  • Distilled content from synced integrations (HubSpot engagements, Zoom and Fathom transcripts, PandaDoc contracts)
The AI cites sources when it uses them. You can review which sources it pulled from in the conversation transcript.
Knowledge search quality is mostly a function of source quality. If answers are wrong or vague, add better source content rather than tweaking instructions.
When on, the AI can fall back to web search for things your knowledge base doesn’t cover. Common uses:
  • “What’s the latest Stripe API version for [feature]?”
  • “Did Slack ship the [X] feature yet?”
  • “What’s the weather in Boston?” (if you support travel-related products)
Web search is opt-in because it can introduce sources you don’t control. Most B2B support workflows leave it off and add explicit knowledge for anything that comes up repeatedly.

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UI Highlighting & Navigation

When on, the agent can visually point at elements in your app and navigate the user to specific pages or buttons. Useful for “click the Settings button” or “the export option is up here.” How it works:
  1. The AI calls highlightElement(selector, options) or navigateToElement(selector, options) mid-response.
  2. The SDK finds the element on your page using the CSS selector.
  3. An animated overlay (Glow Shadow, Pulsing Outline, Spotlight, or Bounce Arrow, configurable) appears around it.
For best results, give your interactive elements stable selectors: 
<!-- Good -->
<button id="settings-btn">Settings</button>
<button data-action="export-csv">Export</button>

<!-- Avoid -->
<button class="btn-primary mt-2">Settings</button>
Customize highlight style on the UI Highlighting tab of /dashboard/settings/widget (Widget Appearance).

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Ticket Creation

Ticket creation is not a manual skill toggle. The createTicket tool is wired into the agent’s runtime when either ticket escalation is enabled (escalation mode is anything other than off, configured in AI Agents > [Your Agent] > Actions > Ticket Escalation) or the org has explicitly added ticket_creation to the agent’s skills array. If you only want tickets when the AI can’t answer, set escalation mode to auto and leave the skill alone. If you want the AI to surface specific structured requests as tickets even when it could otherwise answer, configure escalation accordingly. See Escalation.

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Voice and Live Help

Voice and live video help are widget modes, not skills. Configure them on AI Agents > [Your Agent] > Channels > Chat Widget > Configure, and pick a default mode in the SDK with defaultMode: "chat" | "voice" | "livehelp" | "custom". See Voice & Live Help.

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Skills vs Actions

There’s overlap between skills (this page) and actions (the next page). The cleanest way to think about it:
  • Skills are built-in toggles that ship with Halo. Same set across all customers (just Web Search and UI Highlighting today).
  • Actions are wired to your connected integrations (HubSpot, Linear, Stripe, Slack) plus first-party action cards on the same Actions tab (Ticket Escalation, Stripe Billing, etc.). They show up only when the prerequisite is set up, and you choose which ones a given agent can use.
Both end up as AI tools the model can call. The skill toggles are simpler because they don’t depend on external setup; the action cards manage per-integration configuration like which Linear team to file bugs in.

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Where to go next

Actions

Wire the agent to integration tools: HubSpot, Linear, Stripe, Slack.

Escalation

Decide when the agent should escalate to a human instead of answering.