Academy
7. Personas, Modes and Skills
Install or create personas to shape the agent's tone and method, choose an autonomy mode for each run, and create, import, export and toggle reusable skills that make future missions faster and more consistent.
Personas are named configurations that shape how @oupi behaves during a mission. Each persona bundles a tone, a working method, and a set of preferred tools — think of it as casting the agent in a role. You can install a persona from the built-in templates (e.g., analyst, copywriter, support agent) or create your own for a recurring kind of work. Once a persona is active, every mission it runs adopts that personality: the language it uses, the structure it favours, and the checks it applies. Switching personas between runs lets you reuse the same agent surface for very different jobs without rewriting instructions each time.
Modes control how much autonomy @oupi has during a single run. At one end, step-by-step mode pauses before every significant action so you can approve or reject it — ideal when the stakes are high or you are still learning the agent's behaviour. At the other end, fully autonomous mode lets @oupi plan, execute, verify and deliver without interruption. Choose the mode that matches your confidence in the brief and the sensitivity of the output. You can change the mode for each run independently of the active persona.
Skills are pieces of reusable know-how that @oupi applies automatically when they are relevant. A skill might encode how your company formats reports, a checklist to run before delivery, or the structure of a tender response. You create a skill from Studio, and once validated it is available to every future mission — making outputs faster and more consistent. Skills can also be imported from a file shared by a colleague, or exported so others can reuse them. Toggle any skill on or off from the agent settings without deleting it, so you can adapt the agent's behaviour to different projects instantly.
Start with a template persona and refine it rather than building from scratch. Install the closest match, run a quick mission, review the output, then adjust the tone or method. This iterative approach is faster than trying to specify everything upfront.
When creating a skill, be specific and outcome-oriented — e.g., "Every executive summary must open with the key recommendation, then three supporting data points, then risks." Vague skills ("write well") add little value. Export proven skills so your team can import and toggle them on their own accounts.
Open Studio → Agent Settings (studio.agent.settings). Install one persona template, then create a custom skill — for example, a formatting rule your team follows. Run a quick mission with that persona active and the skill toggled on, then check whether the deliverable respects both the persona's tone and the skill's rule.
Personas set the agent's identity (tone, method, tools) — install from templates or create your own. Modes set the autonomy level per run, from step-by-step approval to fully autonomous. Skills encode reusable know-how (formats, checklists, structures) that the agent applies automatically; create, import, export or toggle them anytime. Together, these three levers let you tailor @oupi's behaviour to any project without rewriting your brief each time.