Exploring Now Assist Skill Kit

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated June 11, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Now Assist Skill Kit

    The Now Assist Skill Kit plugin allows ServiceNow customers to create and activate custom prompts and skills for Now Assist. This capability offers greater flexibility beyond the base system skills by leveraging generative AI to tailor solutions that fit specific business needs.

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    Before building custom skills, it is important for users to understand the fundamentals of prompt engineering and the behavior of large language models (LLMs), including their probabilistic nature and variability of outputs. Effective skill development involves testing prompts with representative instance data and refining them accordingly.

    Prerequisites and User Roles

    • Plugin update: Customers must update their Now Assist plugins via the Application Manager to the latest release (e.g., Now Assist for ITSM).
    • Role assignment: The snskillbuilder.admin role must be assigned to users who create and refine skills.
    • AI Developer: Responsible for creating skills, writing and refining prompts, and configuring skills. Requires prompt engineering expertise and LLM knowledge.
    • Now Assist Admin: Reviews and activates published skills to make them available at configured touchpoints. Requires the admin role.

    Workflow for Creating Custom Skills

    • Define the provider: Choose an appropriate LLM after understanding its benefits and limitations.
    • Build the prompt: Develop prompts using knowledge of your Now Assist instance architecture and LLM fundamentals to specify data inputs effectively.
    • Test the prompt: Use the Skill Kit’s editor to test and iterate on prompts to ensure they meet use case requirements.
    • Deploy the skill: Deploy custom skills to various Now Assist touchpoints, such as the Now Assist panel, context menu, Virtual Agent, Flow Action, or UI Action.

    Benefits

    Now Assist Skill Kit empowers customers to design custom generative AI functionality that integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow workflows, enhancing effectiveness and efficiency. Key benefits include:

    • Creating tailored AI-driven solutions that fit specific organizational needs.
    • Building and editing prompts to incorporate relevant data inputs for improved contextual responses.
    • Testing and refining skills before activation to ensure reliable performance.

    Next Steps

    To maximize the value of Now Assist Skill Kit, customers should explore additional documentation on configuring and using the Skill Kit effectively within their ServiceNow environments.

    Use the Now Assist Skill Kit plugin for Now Assist to create and activate custom prompts and skills for Now Assist.

    Now Assist Skill Kit overview

    Use Now Assist Skill Kit to create custom skills when base system Now Assist skills don't fit your needs. Custom skills enable you to have greater flexibility with Now Assist's generative AI capabilities.

    Before you build a custom skill

    Because you write and refine the prompts that drive your skills, you should be comfortable with the fundamentals of prompt engineering and with how a large language model (LLM) behaves.

    Before you begin, you should understand:
    • How an LLM produces output, including its probabilistic nature and the fact that the same prompt can produce different results on different models.
    • How to write, test, and refine a prompt based on the output it produces, rather than on how you expect the model to interpret your wording.
    • The use case you want to solve and the persona you're building the skill for.

    Effective skill development depends on testing the prompt against representative data from your instance and refining it based on the results, not on a single example. For the full set of guidelines and the phases of building a skill, see General guidelines for Now Assist Skill Kit. For help defining requirements and outcomes before you build, see Scoping the skill.

    Get Now Assist Skill Kit

    To use Now Assist Skill Kit, you must update your Now Assist plugins in the Application Manager. For example, update your Now Assist for ITSM plugin to the latest available release.

    You must also assign the sn_skill_builder.admin role to anyone who uses Now Assist Skill Kit.

    Now Assist Skill Kit users

    Table 1. Now Assist Skill Kit Users
    User Description
    AI developer Creates new skills, writes and refines the prompts, and configures the skill settings. This user must have the sn_skill_builder.admin role. Building an effective skill requires prompt engineering experience and an understanding of LLM behavior.
    Now Assist admin Reviews and activates published skills so that they're available at the configured touch points. This user must have the admin role.

    Now Assist Skill Kit workflow

    The following diagram shows the user journey for Now Assist Skill Kit.

    Figure 1. User journey for Now Assist Skill Kit
    Define your LLM provider, then develop custom skills by specifying input sources and configuring the prompt. Test with data from your instance, and then deploy your new skill.
    Define the provider
    Understand the benefits and potential downsides of each large language model (LLM) that you're considering using.
    Build the prompt
    You must have an understanding of the architecture of your Now Assist instance and be able to define where input data should come from. You should also have an understanding of LLM fundamentals to build an effective prompt.
    Test the prompt
    Now Assist Skill Kit enables you to test your prompt from the editor.
    Deploy the skill
    Now Assist Skill Kit enables you to deploy your skill to Now Assist panel, Now Assist Context Menu, Virtual Agent, Flow Action, or a UI Action.

    Now Assist Skill Kit benefits

    Now Assist Skill Kit enables you to design your own custom generative AI functionality that is then easily deployed into the ServiceNow platform. Custom skills can augment workflows with generative AI to increase effectiveness and efficiency.

    Table 2. Now Assist Skill Kit benefits
    Benefit Feature Users
    Create custom solutions by building a custom skill or workflow. Create a skill AI developer
    Create and edit prompts for skills and configure where you want to bring in data from to augment your prompt. Create a prompt AI developer
    Test and iterate on your skill before activating it. Test a prompt AI developer

    What to explore next

    To learn more about configuring and using Now Assist Skill Kit, see: