Custom Workflows (Skills)

A custom workflow teaches the AI to do things your way. No code involved — it's a plain-language playbook: what steps to follow, what to watch out for, how to format the result.

Think of it as a job description you hand the AI for tasks you do often.

The fast path: the built-in editor

No files to touch. Open Toolbox → Custom Workflows (also reachable from Settings):

• Left: your workflows, plus Nephele's built-in ones — copy any of them as a starting point
• Right: the editor — a one-line description, search aliases, and the body

Saving takes effect immediately — no restart. Back in the chat box, type / followed by the workflow's name to activate it for that conversation.

The name you pick becomes the invocation: create commission-quote, then type /commission-quote to use it.

Invocation: explicit /, not automatic

Your workflows activate only when you call them: type / in the input box and pick from the list (or type the full name).

Earlier versions auto-injected workflows by keyword-matching your message. That mechanism is gone — automatic triggering either misfires (a broad keyword activates your workflow in unrelated chats) or never fires (a narrow one). Explicit invocation makes "did my workflow apply this turn" a certain thing.

So the keywords field is now just search aliases for the / picker. Use words you'll remember.

What to put in the body

The body is for the AI, in free-form Markdown. What works:

• Step-by-step procedures — do this first, then that
• Decision rules — which path to take in which situation
• Output templates — how to organize and report results
• Don'ts — things to avoid (explicit beats implicit, for AIs as for people)

Keep it lean: the body is capped at 18,000 characters and truncated beyond that (the editor shows each workflow's character count). Fewer, sharper rules beat an encyclopedia — if the AI ignores your workflow, trim it to the essential 3–5 rules first.

Hand-written files (advanced)

Prefer your own editor? A workflow is just a Markdown file:

~/.nephele_workshop/skills/
└── my-skill/
    └── SKILL.md

The first time you open the Custom Workflows panel, a _template/ folder appears in that directory with an annotated starter. Copy the folder, rename it (drop the leading _), edit, then hit "Rescan" in the panel.

SKILL.md starts with a front-matter block:

---
name: my-skill-name
description: "One line on what this workflow does"
keywords: [alias1, alias2]
---

Practical rules:

• Folders starting with _ or . are skipped — prefix a folder with _ to disable a workflow temporarily
• Encoding is forgiving — Notepad "ANSI" and BOM'd UTF-8 both parse fine
• Failures are visible — a broken front-matter shows up in the panel with the file and the reason

Managing and troubleshooting

• Master switch: Settings has a global toggle for custom workflows. If the AI starts acting strangely, flip it off first to rule out your customizations — much faster than checking one by one
• Is it installed? After saving, type / in the chat box — if it's in the list, it's loaded. Whether it applied this turn depends on whether you invoked it
• Not following the playbook? Usually the body is too long or the rules conflict. Trim to the essential few and retry

Workflow or feature request?

In short: strategy goes in workflows; capability needs a feature — and feature requests are welcome in the community.