Skills
The full library of AI Copilot skills — what each one does, where it appears, and what data it uses.
Skills
A skill is a bite-sized AI ability the Copilot can perform — like "qualify this lead" or "draft a customer reply". Skills are the building blocks of both the Sales Copilot and the Service Copilot.
Why skills, not "one big AI"
Breaking the Copilot into skills makes it:
- Predictable — each skill has a defined input, output, and behavior.
- Auditable — admins can see what each skill reads from and writes to.
- Improvable — you can refine one skill (e.g., better lead qualification) without touching others.
- Permission-aware — skills inherit the user's record visibility.
Built-in skills
HotCRM ships with six core skills:
| Skill | Used by | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 🔄 Live Data | Sales + Service | Reads the live schema and the live records — every turn |
| 🎯 Lead Qualification | Sales | Scores a lead on BANT, recommends next action |
| ✍️ Email Drafting | Sales + Service | Drafts a context-aware email or reply |
| 📈 Revenue Forecasting | Sales | Rolls up pipeline into commit / best-case / pipeline buckets |
| 🔭 Customer 360° | Sales + Service | One-page summary of an account or contact |
| 🚦 Case Triage | Service | Suggests priority, category, queue, and matching KB articles |
🔄 Live Data
| Input | Any natural-language question about CRM data ("which accounts…", "show me the top…") |
| Reads | The live object metadata (describe_object, list_objects) and the live records (query_records, get_record, aggregate_data) at the moment of the question — no cached snapshot |
| Output | Direct answer with cited record IDs |
| Writes | Nothing — read-only |
| Knowledge base | None — purely metadata + records |
This is the skill behind Wow #1 — Live Schema: add a field in the admin console, and the Copilot uses it on the very next turn. Every other Sales / Service skill composes on top of Live Data, so the same live-schema property applies transitively — Lead Qualification can score a lead on a custom field added 10 seconds ago.
🎯 Lead Qualification
| Input | A lead record |
| Reads | Lead fields, campaign engagement, matched account history |
| Output | Rating (Hot/Warm/Cold), BANT score, recommended status, rationale |
| Writes | Updates rating and status if user accepts |
| Knowledge base | Sales Knowledge |
✍️ Email Drafting
| Input | A record (lead, contact, opportunity, case) + a goal sentence |
| Reads | Record fields, related activities, contact history |
| Output | Draft email with subject + body |
| Writes | Nothing automatically — user reviews and sends |
| Knowledge base | Sales Knowledge (sales context), Support Knowledge (service context), Product Information (technical content) |
📈 Revenue Forecasting
| Input | A user (or team) + a period (this quarter, next quarter, custom) |
| Reads | Opportunities visible to the user, opportunity history |
| Output | Forecast bucketed by Closed / Commit / Best Case / Pipeline + risk callouts |
| Writes | Nothing — read-only |
| Knowledge base | Sales Knowledge (for forecast methodology) |
🔭 Customer 360°
| Input | An account or contact |
| Reads | Account, contacts, opportunities, contracts, cases, recent activities, campaign memberships |
| Output | Structured snapshot with sections for sales, service, contracts, and engagement |
| Writes | Nothing — read-only |
| Knowledge base | None — purely data-driven |
🚦 Case Triage
| Input | A new case |
| Reads | Case subject/description, contact and account context, prior cases, product |
| Output | Suggested priority, category, team, top 3 KB articles, draft acknowledgment |
| Writes | Updates priority, category, queue if user accepts |
| Knowledge base | Support Knowledge, Product Information |
How skills work together
Skills can call other skills. For example:
- The Service Copilot's Case Triage skill can invoke Customer 360 to check if the customer is high-value before assigning priority.
- The Sales Copilot's Email Drafting skill can invoke Customer 360 to ground the email in real account context.
This composition is automatic — you ask one question, the Copilot wires up whatever skills it needs.
What every skill respects
- Sharing rules — a skill running for user X can only read records visible to X.
- Field-level security — restricted fields are hidden from skill input.
- Audit log — every skill invocation, with input and output, is logged for review.
- Confirmation — any skill that writes requires explicit user confirmation before commit.
Adding your own skills
Admins and developers can build custom skills — for example:
- Generate a renewal pitch for a contract about to expire.
- Score account health combining usage, NPS, and case volume.
- Draft a release-notes email when a product hits a milestone.
See Customization › AI Skills for how to define a new skill, what knowledge bases it can use, and how to test it.
Tips for admins
- ✅ Monitor skill usage in the AI dashboard — which skills are used most, which have low acceptance.
- ✅ Tune knowledge bases for the skills that under-perform — most accuracy issues are knowledge issues.
- ✅ Disable skills that don't fit your business — each skill can be toggled in admin settings.