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
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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.