Migrating an legacy Knowledge Agent to Skills

If your Knowledge Agent was created before Skills, it always follows the same path: search your sources, generate an answer, cite where it came from. That works well when a question already has enough context, but a vague question with a fixed path behind it can lead to a generic or unhelpful answer.

A Skills-enabled agent can do more. It reads the skills you've configured and routes each question to the best fit, so it can ask a clarifying question before answering, walk through a process step by step, or draft a support ticket, in addition to answering directly. Skills-enabled agents can also be configured and improved conversationally through Operator Mode.

Skills are only available on newly created Knowledge Agents, so moving an existing agent onto Skills means creating a new agent alongside it and switching your team over once it's ready. The whole process takes a few minutes.

Creating your replacement agent

1. Go to Manage > Knowledge Agents > + Add Knowledge Agent.
2. Give it a name. If you want a clean swap, reuse the old agent's name and image so the transition is seamless for your team.
3. Choose Specific sources or All sources, then save.

Connecting your sources

Open the new agent's Sources tab and select the same collections and integrations the old agent used. Source access still respects the permissions of whoever asks the question, so this step doesn't change what any individual user can see.

Bringing over your customized prompt

New agents come with two pre-configured, fully editable skills:

• Answer, for direct questions using your connected sources
• Research, for deep, multi-source questions

If you customized your old prompt, some of it may belong in the new Knowledge Agent's prompt and some of it may be better placed in the instructions of the Answers skill. Use Operator Mode in the new Knowledge Agent to help you. Let it know what you want to do or copy/paste the below Operator Mode prompt along with your old Knowledge Agent prompt:

Below is my customized prompt from an old knowledge agent. Help me add all of the instructions contained in this old prompt into this knowledge agent's prompt and it's answer skill as appropriate. Tell me exactly what you're recommending to add and where. Do not omit any details from the old prompt, however, if you determine that there will be redundant or contradictory elements in the prompt or skill instructions, flag those clearly for me and recommend the best course of action.

Here is the old prompt: 
[INSERT OLD KNOWLEDGE AGENT PROMPT]

At this point your new agent already gives a better experience than the old one. The rest of this article covers refining it further and rolling it out.

Teaching it new behavior with Operator Mode

Test your new agent with real questions your team asks. When you find one that should behave differently, for example, an agent that should ask a clarifying question before answering a refund request instead of guessing:

1. Open the AI Agent Center, find the question, and click Analyze.
2. Guru opens Operator Mode with that answer already loaded and starts tracing which skill ran, which sources it used, and where it went wrong.
3. Describe the behavior you want, for example: "When a refund request is missing the order number, ask for it before answering."
4. Review the proposed change and accept it. Operator Mode regenerates the answer in a test context, and the fix persists so future similar questions get the improved response automatically.

Granting access and rolling out

1. Open the new agent's Permissions tab. Add the users or groups who should use it as Viewers, and promote whoever will manage the agent's settings to Owner.
2. To enable it in Slack, open the Slack Channels tab, add the relevant channels, and use each channel's gear icon to set:
   • Auto-respond in channel: all messages, or only when @mentioned
   • Auto-respond in thread: all messages, or only when @mentioned
   • Respond to messages from: humans and bots, humans only, or bots only
3. To enable it in Microsoft Teams, assign the agent to the relevant channel. [MISSING INFORMATION ABOUT the exact Teams admin screen and setting names for assigning a Knowledge Agent to a channel]

Retiring the old agent

Once you've tested the new agent and you're ready to fully switch over:

1. Open the old agent's Permissions tab and remove its users and groups.
2. Remove its assignments from any Slack or Teams channels.

Frequently asked questions about migrating to Skills

Will I lose the training I've done editing answers in the AI Agent Center? No. Editing an answer boosts the underlying source for similar future questions, rather than training the specific agent, so that improvement carries over automatically to any agent connected to the same source, including your new one.

Does the AI Agent Center work the same way on a Skills-enabled agent? Not exactly. Skills-enabled agents don't support manual answer editing or expert assignment. Instead, the AI Agent Center shows thread visibility and per-skill tracking, and you fix a bad answer by clicking Analyze and working through Operator Mode.

Do I have to migrate everything at once? No. Create the new agent, connect sources, and bring over your prompt first, that alone is an improvement. Refining behavior with Operator Mode and rolling out to Slack or Teams can happen afterward, at your own pace.

Can I test the new agent before my whole team sees it? Yes. Leave the Permissions tab limited to yourself (or a small group) while you test, and add the rest of your Viewers once you're confident in how it responds.