Custom Studio Skills

Custom skills let your workspace add its own tools to Studio's tool rail, next to the built-in ones. An administrator designs the tool once, as a reusable AI instruction with a list of options. From then on, anyone on the team gets consistent results by picking an option and clicking Generate. The people who use the tool do not write prompts.

Example. An accessory brand wants product photos shown in real-life settings. An administrator creates a "Lifestyle scenes" skill with two options, Café table and Designer desk, each with its own scene description. A marketer opens Studio, picks Café table, clicks Generate, and gets the product placed on a rustic café table in soft morning light. Every person on the team uses the same prompt.

Using a custom skill (everyone)

Enabled custom skills appear in the Studio tool rail like any other tool, with the same panel and the same version workflow.

Open any image in Studio.
Pick the custom skill in the left rail (or the bottom tool bar on mobile).
The panel shows a short helper sentence and the skill's options. A list whose options have images is shown as thumbnail cards. A list without images is shown as buttons.
Choose an option and click Generate. The result is added to the version strip at the bottom, as with a built-in tool, and the original asset is not changed. Save it, continue from it, or delete it as usual.

A custom skill selected in the Studio tool rail, showing its helper text and options

Good to know:

You see labels and pictures only. The AI instructions behind each option stay on the server.
Administrators choose the rail. They decide which tools appear and in which order, so your rail may differ from another workspace's, and some built-in tools may be hidden.
If a custom skill disappears during a session, an administrator disabled or removed it. A generation that had not finished fails with the message "This tool was disabled or removed before the run could finish. Ask an administrator, or pick another tool."

Creating a custom skill (administrators)

You need the Manage Studio skills permission (administrators have it by default). Open Administration → Studio Skills.

The catalog

The page lists every tool the rail can show, built-in and custom together, in rail order:

Drag rows to reorder them. The Studio rail follows immediately.
Use the Show in Studio switch to show or hide any tool, including built-in ones. Hiding a tool also blocks new runs of it.
Built-in tools carry a Built-in badge. Custom skills carry a Custom badge and Edit skill and Delete skill buttons, and their row shows how many option lists and choices they define.

A custom skill row in the Studio Skills catalog, with the Custom badge

The editor

Click New skill to open an empty editor. While the workspace has no custom skill yet, the page also offers Start from the example, which fills in the whole "Lifestyle scenes" skill for you to adapt. A skill is made of:

Name, Icon, Helper text and Description: what your team sees in the rail and panel. The helper text is shown at the top of the tool panel, and the description is the rail tooltip. The icon comes from a fixed set that includes the icons of the built-in tools.
Prompt template: the instruction sent to the AI. Placeholders are written in braces, like {scene}. The Insert slot button adds a placeholder and its option list together, so the two always match. A good template states the goal, what must not change (product, colors, logo), and the expected output. The editor shows these tips under the field.
Option lists: one list per placeholder. Each choice pairs the label users see with the hidden prompt fragment the AI receives, plus an optional thumbnail. Drag choices to reorder them. Bulk add creates one choice per pasted line, and you write the prompts afterwards.

While you edit, the right-hand column shows a Studio preview of the tool panel and, under What the AI will receive, the exact prompt for the options selected in the preview.

The skill editor with live preview

Test before you enable

Under Test on a real image in the editor, pick an image from your library and click Generate in the preview. Freedam saves the skill, then runs it through the real generation pipeline. The run counts as AI usage like a normal Studio run, and works while the skill is still disabled. When a result is good, click Use as choice thumbnail to make it the card image of the selected choice.

When the skill is ready, turn on its Show in Studio switch in the catalog. The confirmation message offers Open Studio to try it.

Rules and limits

Up to 25 custom skills per workspace, 10 option lists per skill, 50 choices per list, and 5,000 characters per template.
Every {placeholder} must match exactly one option list, each placeholder can appear only once in the template, and every list must be used. When you save, the editor names any mismatch.
Custom skill text is written in one language of your choice. Freedam does not translate it.
Choice thumbnails accept JPEG, PNG, and WebP up to 10 MB.
Every custom skill runs the same steps: the source image, one AI image edit using your template with the chosen options filled in, and one new version in the session.

Privacy and audit

Prompt templates and per-choice fragments are visible only on the Studio Skills page and in the Studio audit view. They are never sent to the browser of someone using the skill.
Every run records full provenance: the skill, the chosen options, and the exact resolved prompt. People with the View other people's Studio work and Manage AI operations permissions can review it in AI Operations, under Studio Analytics.
Renaming a choice does not affect history: each choice keeps a stable internal identifier.
Deleting a skill removes it from the rail immediately. Past runs keep their audit trail, including the skill's name and prompts at the time of the run.

Troubleshooting

"Your template mentions {x} but has no matching list or field.": add a list for that placeholder, or remove it from the template. Insert slot avoids this by creating both together.
Thumbnails cannot be added to a new skill: save the skill first. Until then, the upload button shows "Save the skill first to add thumbnails".
A colleague cannot see the new skill: check that it is enabled in the catalog and that their role includes Use Studio. The rail updates the next time they open Studio.
A run failed with "This tool was disabled or removed before the run could finish.": the skill was turned off or deleted before the run finished. Enable it again or pick another tool.