Skills Governance

This document explains how skills work in Roundhouse by AI Dojo, who can do what, and what happens when a skill is shared across your organisation.

For step-by-step instructions on building a skill, see How to create a skill.

What is a skill?

A skill is a packaged set of instructions and resources that shapes how the AI assistant behaves for specific tasks — for example, summarising meeting notes in your firm's format, or applying your compliance checklist.

Skills appear in the Skills centre within Roundhouse. Each user chooses which skills are enabled for their own account, subject to the rules below.

Types of skills

Skills fall into four categories. You will see these labelled in the Skills list.

Foundation skills power core platform behaviour. They are always enabled and cannot be turned off.

Core skills are standard AI Dojo capabilities. Members can enable or disable them individually.

Organisation skills are custom skills that a creator has chosen to share with the whole organisation via the organisation marketplace.

User skills are personal custom skills. They are private to the creator until published to the organisation.

Subscription requirement

Custom skills (creating your own User or Organisation skills) require a Standard subscription.

Organisations on the Essentials tier can still use Foundation and Core skills, but cannot create custom skills.

Organisation roles and skill permissions

Within each organisation, members have a role. The table below summarises what each role can do in relation to skills.

Analyst has the same skill permissions as a regular User — the Analyst role is used for other product features (such as analytics), not for skill administration.

Skill Manager is a dedicated role for people responsible for rolling out skills across the firm. Skill Managers can turn on auto-enable for all members when an organisation skill is published, but they cannot edit or delete skills created by someone else.

Admin can do everything a Skill Manager can, and can also assign the Skill Manager role to colleagues via user management.

Who can create a skill?

Any active member of the organisation on a Standard subscription can create a custom skill.

When a skill is created:

1. It starts as a personal (User) skill, visible only to the creator.
2. It is automatically enabled for the creator.
3. The creator uploads a skill package (folder, zip, or SKILL.md ).

Creating a skill does not automatically share it with the rest of the organisation.

Who can share a skill with the organisation?

Only the creator of a skill can publish it to the organisation marketplace.

To share a skill:

1. The creator must first upload a skill package.
2. In the edit dialog, they turn on Publish to organisation marketplace.
3. Publishing is permanent — a skill cannot be unpublished or moved back to personal-only once shared.

After publishing:

• The skill appears in the Organisation Skills section for every member of the organisation.
• Other members can enable or disable it for themselves.
• The skill remains owned by the original creator for editing and deletion purposes.

There is no separate approval workflow: any member who creates a skill can choose to share it with the organisation. If your firm wants tighter control, consider:

• Assigning a Skill Manager (or Admin) to manage rollout via auto-enable settings.
• Establishing an internal policy that only designated people create and publish organisation skills.
• Using the Admin role to grant Skill Manager access to trusted colleagues only.

What happens when a shared skill is edited?

Only the original creator can edit or delete a skill — including organisation-shared skills.

When the creator edits a shared skill (for example, updating the display name or uploading a new skill package):

• The change applies to the single organisation skill record — there is not a separate copy per user.
• Every member who has that skill enabled will use the updated version in their conversations.
• Members who have the skill disabled are unaffected until they enable it.

There is no version history or rollback exposed in the product UI today. If governance requires review before changes go live, that process should be handled internally before the creator saves updates.

Deleting a shared skill removes it for the entire organisation. All members lose access, and any enablement records for that skill are cleared.

Enabling and disabling skills

Each member controls which skills are active for their own account, with these exceptions:

Auto-enable for all members

Admins and Skill Managers can optionally turn on Auto-enable for all members when editing an organisation-shared skill.

When auto-enable is active:

• The skill is turned on for all current organisation members who do not already have an explicit preference recorded.
• New members who join the organisation are automatically given the skill when they are onboarded.
• Members who have previously disabled the skill are not re-enabled if auto-enable is turned on later. Their opt-out is respected.

This is useful when a firm wants a compliance or workflow skill available to everyone by default, while still allowing individuals to turn it off if needed.

Skill identifiers and conflicts

Every skill has a SKILL.md identifier (a short identifier, derived from the name within the SKILL.md file). Identifiers must be unique within the scopes that matter for your organisation.

If two enabled skills share the same identifier, the product resolves the conflict using a fixed priority order (highest wins):

1. User (your personal skill)
2. Organisation
3. Core
4. Foundation

The lower-priority skill is marked as Overridden in the Skills list and will not be used while the higher-priority skill with the same identifier is enabled. This allows a firm to offer an organisation-wide customisation of a Core skill without changing the platform default for other customers.

Visibility and privacy

Organisation-shared skills show the creator's name in the Skills list so members know who maintains each skill.

Shareable links can be copied for organisation, Core, and Foundation skills (not for personal skills), making it easy to direct a colleague to a specific skill's detail page.

Summary for governance planning

Recommended internal practices

These are suggestions for firms that want stronger governance than the product enforces by default:

1. Nominate skill owners — Designate one or two people (with Admin or Skill Manager roles) who are allowed to publish organisation skills.
2. Review before publish — Run a lightweight compliance or quality check on skill content before the owner toggles organisation sharing.
3. Use auto-enable deliberately — Turn on auto-enable only for skills you want as firm-wide defaults; leave optional skills off auto-enable so members choose for themselves.
4. Assign Skill Manager — Give trusted colleagues the Skill Manager role if they should manage rollout without full Admin access.
5. Coordinate identifier naming — Agree a naming convention for skill identifiers to avoid accidental overrides of Core skills.

Related resources

• How to create a skill — technical walkthrough for authors
• Skills page in the product — manage enablement and create or edit your own skills
• Your organisation Admin — role assignment and subscription tier