Update a Skill without changing a Routine

A Skill you are editing is a draft. A Skill version is frozen. Once a version exists it never changes: the instructions, the files, and the contract inside it are fixed, and it carries a content fingerprint so you can tell two versions apart at a glance.

This is the mechanism that makes scheduled work safe. A Routine pins one exact Skill version, so a Monday briefing that has worked for eight weeks keeps running the version that worked, even while you are rewriting the Skill on a Wednesday.

Freezing a version

Open a Skill and look at the Version field on the detail page.

• Not frozen means the Skill exists only as an editable draft. Click Save as version 1 to freeze it.
• v1, v2, and so on mean a frozen, immutable version exists. Alongside it you will see the number of files in the package and a short content fingerprint.

Each meaningful save creates the next version. Numbers only ever go up, and an old version is never overwritten or edited, which is why past runs still make sense months later.

What a Routine pins

When you click Create routine from a Skill, the Routine stores the Skill and the exact version you were looking at. From then on:

• Editing the Skill and freezing a new version does not change the running Routine.
• The Routine keeps its owner, cadence, time zone, delivery target, thread, and history regardless of what happens to the Skill draft.
• To move a Routine onto a newer version, edit the Routine deliberately. Nothing repins itself.

Revising a Skill

There are three ways to produce a new version, and they all end in the same place:

1. Edit in place, then save. The next version is created from your edit.
2. Ask your Talent to revise the Skill in chat, then save the result.
3. Import a revised package. Export the Skill, edit the folder in your own editor, and use Import revised version to bring it back into the same Skill rather than creating a second one.

The import path is why Skills are described as portable. A Skill is a folder of plain text, so it survives outside TalentOS and can be reviewed the way any other document is.

Sharing freezes things further

A shared Skill stays on the exact version your workspace approved. To edit it, the author sets it back to private, revises it, and shares it again. It is unavailable to everyone in between, so plan that change rather than doing it mid week on something people depend on.

A worked example

Version 2 of your campaign report Skill runs every Friday. On Tuesday you add a new metric and save version 3. Friday's Routine still runs version 2 until you open the Routine and move it to version 3. Test version 3 once before repinning so the scheduled report never changes by surprise.

What to check

• "Not frozen" and no Create routine button. Freeze version 1 first. A Routine needs an exact version to pin.
• You edited a Skill and the Routine did not change. Working as intended. Edit the Routine to move it onto the new version.
• Two Skills with the same name. You probably imported a revision as a new Skill instead of using Import revised version. Delete the duplicate and re-import into the original.
• A revision was rejected. Packages are capped at 100 files and 512KB of text, and binary files are not accepted.

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