Skip to main contentSpecialties let you specialize agents for specific tasks. Every agent needs a specialty to run—if you don’t select one during initialization, it defaults to SYSOPS.
Purpose of Specialties
While 2501 agents are built for autonomous system operations, specialization improves execution accuracy and reliability. Instead of operating generically, specialized agents follow domain-specific guidelines tailored to your infrastructure.
Example: An agent with an AWS CLI specialty can manage EC2 instances with specific guidance on CLI usage patterns, error handling, and decision-making logic (like determining appropriate CPU upgrades when asked to “upgrade my sandbox machine”).
Specialties work well for:
- Providing context for proprietary or lesser-known tools
- Establishing workflows without full MCP integrations
- Documenting internal conventions and procedures
Separation of Concerns
To maximize accuracy, use different tools for different purposes:
- Specialties: Define workflows, provide context, establish best practices
- Operational Rules: Enforce specific tool usage or behavioral requirements
- Blacklist: Prevent execution of prohibited commands
Managing Specialties
Go to Accounts → Specialties and click Create Specialty to add a new one.
Name
The display name for your specialty. Use naming conventions that reflect the service domain or agent role.
Example: TERRAFORM_SPECIALIST
Key
A read-only identifier automatically generated from the name. Use this key in CLI commands to assign specialties during agent initialization.
Description
Optional context about the specialty’s purpose and scope.
Example: Handles Terraform infrastructure files for sandbox environments
Organization
By default, specialties are available to all organizations. Select a specific organization to restrict usage to only that org’s agents.
Prompt
The specialty definition itself. Use structured formats like Markdown or XML for clarity.
Important: Changes to a specialty immediately affect all agents using it. To test modifications safely, create a new specialty for testing, assign it to a test agent, validate the behavior, then update the production specialty.
For guidance on effective agent prompting, refer to our Prompting Guide.
Best Practices
Keep specialty prompts focused and domain-specific. Document expected behaviors and decision criteria with clear examples for complex workflows.
Test specialty changes on isolated agents before rolling them out to production. For critical systems, consider version-controlling your specialty definitions. 
