AI Skills — .md files
Status: draft. Concrete reference content + structural placeholders; flesh out the prose + screenshots when ready.
Purpose
AI Skills are user-editable markdown files that give VL Studio's AI extra domain knowledge — context that goes beyond what the AI can read from your preset alone. A skill might tell the AI "when to use HardTune Pop style," "what a typical reverb decay for a ballad is," or "how this band's vocal harmonies typically sit in the mix."
Skills are stored as plain markdown files in your VL Studio app data directory and are shareable as standalone files. Bundled starters cover the vocal and guitar effect blocks plus core concepts; you can add your own.
What's in a skill file
Each skill is a single .md file with YAML frontmatter followed by a markdown body.
yaml
---
name: vocal_harmony
triggers: [harmony, harmonies, backing vocals]
priority: 5
enabled: true
---
# When the user asks about harmonies
The harmony block has per-voice levels inside the block, but the
user-facing loudness control is the mixer-block Harmony level in
the EQ/Mix tab. Reach for set_mixer with Mixer_L.Harmony for
loudness changes, not the per-voice levels inside the Harmony block.
(...rest of the skill body...)| Frontmatter field | Use |
|---|---|
name | Internal identifier — shown in the Settings → AI Skills list. |
triggers | Array of keywords. The AI loads this skill into context when your chat message contains any of them (case-insensitive substring match). |
priority | Integer. Higher-priority skills win when the token budget gets tight; same-priority skills order by name. |
enabled | true / false — the Settings UI toggle. Disabled skills stay on disk but don't load. |
The markdown body below the frontmatter is the actual skill content — what the AI reads. Treat it as a short article aimed at the AI: lead with the most important point, keep paragraphs tight, and use examples where they help.
Where the files live
| OS | Path |
|---|---|
| Linux | ~/.local/share/com.vl3studio.desktop/skills/ |
| Windows | %APPDATA%\com.vl3studio.desktop\skills\ |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/com.vl3studio.desktop/skills/ |
On first launch, VL Studio seeds this directory with 25 starter skills covering vocal and guitar effect blocks plus core concepts (preset basics, HIT function, NaturalPlay and key/scale, tempo and clocks, mix routing, global effects).
How to create or edit a skill
Settings → AI Skills opens a list of every skill in the directory. Each row shows the name, trigger keywords, priority, and an enabled toggle.
- Edit opens a modal with editable fields for name, triggers, priority, and body. Save writes the file back to disk in the correct format.
- Delete removes the file from disk.
- Disable flips the
enabled: falseflag without deleting the file.
How to share a skill
Sharing is currently manual
VL Studio doesn't yet have an "Export this skill" button in the Settings UI. Sharing a skill means copying the .md file out of the skills directory by hand:
- Open the skills directory in your OS file manager (paths above).
- Find the
.mdfile by name — the filename matches the skill'snamefrontmatter field. - Copy or send the file via your preferred channel (email, drive share, git repo).
To import a skill someone sent you, drop their .md file into your skills directory. VL Studio re-reads the directory on the next chat turn and picks the new skill up automatically (no restart needed).
What's in a good skill
Skills are most useful when they encode musician-facing knowledge that the AI can't derive from preset parameters alone:
- When to use a particular style — "use HardTune Pop for tight pitch correction with no artifact pumping; use Country for natural-sounding pitch correction that still sounds like a human voice."
- Typical settings for a genre — "for ballads, reverb decay 2.5–4.0 seconds with high pre-delay sounds spacious; rock vocals want 1.0–1.5 seconds with low pre-delay so the dry voice stays present."
- Routing or signal-chain context — "boost replaces amp gain rather than stacking; design the amp gain knowing boost will replace it."
- User-facing lever vs. underlying parameter — "the user-facing loudness lever for harmonies is the mixer-block Harmony level, not the per-voice levels inside the Harmony block."
Skills are not the place for:
- Static reference data the AI can look up via tools (parameter names, valid ranges, default values).
- Information that changes per-preset (specific knob values for one user's tuned sound — that's a preset, not a skill).
Cross-machine moves
A skill file made on one machine works identically on another — there's no platform-specific data inside. Backing up your custom skills can be done in three ways:
- Manual file copy — copy the
.mdfiles from the skills directory to another machine's skills directory. - Full backup — your AI configuration includes skill state, so the AI Skills section of a
.vl3x-backup.json.gzcarries them. See Full backups. - Git repository — for a power-user workflow, you can version-control the skills directory and pull on each machine. The files are plain markdown.
See also
- AI Chat — the chat interface that loads skills into context.
- Sharing & Files — overview of all interchange formats.
- Settings — the AI Skills section that lists, edits, and toggles skills.
- Full backups — bundles your skills along with everything else.