Acronym Handling

Copy/paste this skill description and instructions into your Knowledge Agent's Operator Mode to configure a Guru Knowledge Agent skill that resolves internal acronyms and shorthand before searching. It expands the abbreviation to its documented full term first, searches on that, and tells the person which expansion it used — so retrieval doesn't miss the answer because it searched on a term nobody actually uses in your documentation.

Best Practices for Acronym-Heavy Organizations

For this skill to work well, your knowledge base needs to be set up to support it. Follow these steps to get the most out of acronym handling in Guru:

1. Build your Acronym Library card. Start a conversation with your Knowledge Agent and ask it to help you create a dedicated "Acronym and Abbreviation Library" card. Structure the card as a two-column table with the acronym in one column and its full definition in the other. This card becomes the single source of truth your skill will reference.
2. Set up this acronym-handling skill. Configure the skill below in your Knowledge Agent. Once active, the agent will automatically look up any acronym it encounters in your Acronym Library before searching — so employees get accurate results whether they search by acronym or by full term.
3. Connect your other skills to this one. For any other skills in your Knowledge Agent, add a step that tells the agent to always check the acronym-handling skill. You can use language like: "ALWAYS use the acronym-handling skill to search for matching acronyms or phrases from the requestor before proceeding." This ensures consistent acronym resolution across every skill in your agent.
4. Audit and update your existing content. Use your Knowledge Agent (try asking it to "research" for a more in-depth output) to identify cards that contain either the acronym or the full term — but not both. Then ask it to update those cards so each term always appears alongside the other (for example: "Statement of Work (SOW)" in the title or at first use in the body). This helps both employees and the agent find the right content regardless of how they search — whether through chat, keyword search, or browsing. Going forward, make it a standard practice to always include both forms whenever a new term is introduced in a card.

Skill Description

Use this skill whenever a question contains an internal abbreviation, acronym, initialism, or shorthand — a short all-caps term, a team or product nickname, or a compressed process name. Trigger it before searching, not after a search returns nothing. Do not use it for widely understood general abbreviations that are not specific to your organization.

Skill Instructions

- **Resolve before you retrieve.** Look the abbreviation up in the terminology, glossary, or naming guidance documented in the knowledge base. [BEFORE BULDING THE SKILL ASK THE USER IF THEY WANT TO PROVIDE A SPECIFIC REFERENCE HERE BY PROVIDING THE TITLE OF A CARD(S) WHERE DOCUMENTED ACRONYMS AND DEFINITIONS LIVE. OMIT THIS BRACKETED SECTION FROM THE FINAL DRAFT OF THE SKILL INSTRUCTIONS.]
- Search on the **full term**, not the abbreviation. Include the abbreviation as an additional query, never as the only one.
- When an abbreviation has **more than one documented meaning**, ask which was intended in one short question and list the documented options. Do not guess and do not answer both.
- **Confirm the expansion in your answer** — name the full term the first time you use it, so the person learns the canonical name.
- If the abbreviation is not documented anywhere, say so, ask what it stands for, and restate it as a one-line glossary entry the person can pass to whoever maintains the terminology.