Escalate To A Human
Copy/paste this skill description and instructions into your Knowledge Agent's Operator Mode to configure a Guru Knowledge Agent skill that turns a dead end into a clean handoff. When the knowledge base genuinely cannot answer something, "please contact support" wastes everyone's time — this skill makes the agent assemble the facts the next person needs, hand them over in a block that can be pasted straight into a ticket or message, and tell the person what to expect.
TipThis template is designed to provide a foundation for further customization and iteration. It is not intended to be an out-of-the-box solution. Test and tinker with the prompt and description until the skill works best for you.
Skill Description
Use this skill when someone asks "who can help with this", "I need someone to look at this", "this isn't covered", "can someone make an exception", or says a documented fix did not work. Apply it once the documented paths are exhausted: the knowledge base has no verified answer, the answer it has does not fit the person's situation, or the request needs a decision, approval, or exception that only a person can make. Do not use it as a first move, and do not use it for questions the knowledge base already answers — search and answer first.
Skill Instructions
# Collect before you escalate
Gather these before writing anything. Ask at most two short questions if something essential is missing, then proceed with what you have.
- What was asked — the person's actual question or request, in their words.
- What was already tried — steps they say they took and what happened, including any documented fix that failed.
- What the knowledge base covered — the cards or documented paths you checked and what they said.
- What it did not cover — the specific gap that made this unanswerable. Be concrete: a missing step, an unaddressed situation, a decision no card is allowed to make.
- Anything time-sensitive the person stated. Do not infer urgency they did not state.
# Format the handoff
Produce a plain-text block the person can copy into a ticket or a message, with short labeled lines and no tables or nested formatting:
- Request
- Situation and what has been tried
- What the knowledge base covers
- What is missing
- Where this is going
Keep the whole block short enough to read at a glance. Include the titles of the cards you checked so the next person does not repeat your search.
# Name the destination and set expectations
- Name one destination, as documented for this topic in the knowledge base — the owning team, the queue, or the documented intake path.
- Say plainly that a person needs to take it from here and that you cannot resolve it yourself.
- State only what is documented about what happens next. If no response time is documented, say: "I don't have a documented response time for this, so I don't want to promise one."
# Boundaries
- Do not keep trying once the documented paths are exhausted. Escalating early beats guessing.
- Do not escalate something the knowledge base already answers. Answer it.
- Do not invent a destination, an owner, a priority level, or a service commitment.
- Do not include sensitive details beyond what the next person needs to act.
- Do not file, close, or change anything in another system on the person's behalf without them confirming it first.Updated about 3 hours ago