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This page summarizes the Bob skills available for watsonx Orchestrate development. For full documentation on each skill, see the Bob skills section in the Developer experience area.

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Overview

The Bob skill set supports the complete lifecycle of building enterprise AI agent solutions:
  1. solution-architect: Transforms business problems into structured solution architectures with executive summaries, technical designs, and implementation roadmaps. Provides the foundation for SOP development.
  2. sop-builder: Converts technical procedures and workflows (for example, BPMN, Langflow, n8n) into business-readable Standard Operating Procedures with plain-language descriptions, Mermaid diagrams, and detailed process documentation.
  3. wxo-builder: Implements production-ready watsonx Orchestrate solutions from SOPs or prompts, generating agents, tools, flows, and knowledge bases following ADK best practices and project structures.
  4. wxo-analyzer: Reverse-engineers existing watsonx Orchestrate projects to produce comprehensive documentation, relationship diagrams, and anti-pattern analysis across enterprise AI failure modes for auditing and onboarding.
  5. agent-instructions-evaluator: Zooms into a specific agent to assess instruction quality and production viability. Evaluates operational achievability, not writing quality, by identifying runtime reliability risks such as hidden state, conflicting rules, vague scope, and brittle phrasing. Produces per-dimension scores and evidence-backed findings across five evaluation dimensions.
Together, these skills form a closed-loop system for designing, building, documenting, and maintaining enterprise-grade watsonx Orchestrate solutions.

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Available skills

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1. solution-architect

Location: solution-architect/SKILL.md The solution-architect skill turns business problems into clear, structured solution architectures. It bridges business and technical perspectives by producing:
  • Executive-level solution overviews
  • Technical architecture and design patterns
  • Implementation roadmaps and SOP-ready documentation
Best for: Early-stage design and stakeholder alignment Key capabilities:
  • Analyzing business requirements and problem statements
  • Generating three focused architecture documents: Solution Overview, Technical Architecture, and Implementation Plan
  • Producing business-focused summaries and context
  • Bridging business needs with technical implementation
  • Preparing documentation for elaboration into detailed SOPs
  • Producing modular, manageable documentation

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2. sop-builder

Location: sop-builder/SKILL.md The sop-builder skill transforms technical workflows into business-readable Standard Operating Procedures. It:
  • Converts BPMN, Langflow, and n8n workflows into plain-language procedures
  • Documents decision points, exceptions, integrations, and prompts
  • Produces Mermaid diagrams and business-ready process descriptions
Best for: Standardizing and operationalizing processes Key capabilities:
  • Analyzing BPMN diagrams, Langflow JSON, and n8n workflows
  • Generating business-focused SOPs in plain language
  • Producing business process flow diagrams with Mermaid
  • Documenting data requirements and custom logic
  • Documenting LLM prompts
  • Defining business procedure steps and decision points
  • Documenting exception handling and integration points
  • Translating technical concepts into business language

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3. wxo-builder

Location: wxo-builder/SKILL.md The wxo-builder skill turns SOPs or prompts into fully implemented watsonx Orchestrate solutions. It:
  • Generates agents, tools, flows, and knowledge bases
  • Follows recommended ADK project structures and patterns
  • Supports multiple knowledge base backends and end-to-end CLI workflows
Best for: Implementing production-ready watsonx Orchestrate builds Key capabilities:
  • Generating complete watsonx Orchestrate implementations from Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
  • Transforming business requirements into agents, tools, flows, and knowledge bases
  • Recommended workflow: use sop-builder to create SOPs from BPMN, n8n, or Langflow first, then use wxo-builder to generate watsonx Orchestrate solutions
  • Knowledge base providers: Milvus, AstraDB, Elasticsearch
  • Standard project structure and implementation patterns
  • Document processing flows and workflow patterns
  • Python tool and flow decorators
  • Agent YAML configuration
  • CLI import commands and best practices
  • Complete examples from the ADK repository

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4. wxo-analyzer

Location: wxo-analyzer/SKILL.md The wxo-analyzer skill reverse-engineers and documents existing watsonx Orchestrate projects. It:
  • Analyzes project structure and components
  • Produces multi-report documentation sets (overview, agents, tools)
  • Generates diagrams and relationship mappings
  • Detects anti-patterns and provides recommendations
Best for: Understanding, auditing, or onboarding into existing watsonx Orchestrate solutions Key capabilities:
  • Analyzing existing watsonx Orchestrate project structures
  • Generating three-report documentation sets: Solution Overview, Agent Analysis, and Tools & Components
  • Creating Mermaid diagrams that show component relationships
  • Documenting agents, tools, connections, and knowledge bases
  • Producing project structure and component inventories
  • Mapping relationships between agents, tools, and resources
  • Detecting anti-patterns across 15 enterprise AI failure modes
  • Counting instruction lines and analyzing complexity
  • Assessing production readiness

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5. agent-instructions-evaluator

Location: agent-instructions-evaluator/SKILL.md The agent-instructions-evaluator skill zooms into a specific agent to evaluate its instructions for operational achievability in production settings. It focuses on instruction quality and production viability rather than writing quality, identifying runtime reliability risks and execution failures before they reach production. It:
  • Focuses on a single agent’s instructions to assess runtime reliability and instruction quality
  • Identifies issues that stem from hidden state, conflicting rules, vague scope, and brittle phrasing
  • Produces structured evaluation reports with evidence-backed findings
  • Provides per-dimension scores across five evaluation dimensions (0–5 scale)
Best for: Zooming into a specific agent to validate instruction quality and production viability before deployment Key capabilities:
  • Evaluating agent instructions across five dimensions: Task Understanding, Scope and Applicability, Execution and Tool Grounding, Instruction Followability, and State and Conflict Manageability
  • Counting deterministic signals (exact phrases, nested branches, implicit state)
  • Producing evidence-backed findings with impact analysis and recommendations
  • Prioritizing risks and identifying high-leverage improvements
  • Generating structured JSON output for evaluation harnesses
  • Supporting watsonx Orchestrate YAML, system prompts, and agent definitions
  • Assessing production readiness with a focus on runtime reliability

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How the skills work together

A typical end-to-end workflow:
In this closed-loop system:
  1. solution-architect establishes the foundation and high-level design.
  2. sop-builder produces detailed, business-readable procedures.
  3. wxo-builder implements the technical solution.
  4. wxo-analyzer validates, documents, and identifies improvements at the solution level.
  5. agent-instructions-evaluator provides a review of a specific agent’s instructions by focusing on a single agent to evaluate the quality, clarity, effectiveness, and overall viability of its instructions.

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Setting up skills in Bob

Skills are reusable instruction sets that teach Bob new workflows and specialized tasks. For full documentation on the Bob skills system, see the Bob skills documentation.

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Step 1 — Add the skill files to your project

Bob discovers skills from two locations: If both locations define a skill with the same name, the project-level skill takes precedence. For each skill you want to use, create a named subfolder and copy the SKILL.md from the ADK repository into it:
Download each SKILL.md directly from the ADK repository:

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Step 2 — Verify discovery

Open Bob Settings → Skills tab. The skills you added should appear in the list with their names and source paths. If a skill is missing, confirm the folder contains a SKILL.md with a valid name field in the frontmatter.

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Step 3 — Use a skill in conversation

Bob automatically activates a skill when your request matches the skill’s description. You can also explicitly ask Bob to use a skill by name. Skills load once per conversation to avoid duplicate prompts. If a skill does not activate, check that the Bob mode you are using has skills enabled.

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Step 4 (optional) — Enable auto-approve

By default, Bob asks for permission before activating a skill. To skip the prompt:
  1. Open Bob Settings.
  2. Navigate to the Auto-Approve section.
  3. Turn on the toggle for Skills.

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About the SKILL.md format

Each skill in this set follows the standard skill format, a folder containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter and instruction content:
Required frontmatter fields: Skills in this set also bundle supporting files (reference implementations, examples) in subdirectories alongside SKILL.md. Bob can read these files automatically once the skill is activated. For full details on the skill format and authoring your own skills, see the Bob skills documentation.

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Resources

Bob documentation
  • Bob skills documentation — full reference for the Bob skills system, including setup, the SKILL.md format, skill locations, auto-approve, and authoring guidance
ADK skill files