How to use the Distilly Profile and Person Builder agent skill

What the distilly skill makes the agent do

Distilly does two related things. First, it can run a first-time setup that learns who you are, so that later agents know who they work for. Second, it can take material you provide about a colleague, a relationship or a public figure and distill it into a reusable Person Profile that other agents can follow.

Generated skills are written into your project folder under ./skills/ through a bundled Python writer. Existing generated skills can be updated, rolled back or deleted.

• Owner profile: a first-run setup that asks you about yourself, triggered by requests such as "get to know me".
• Person Profiles: colleague, relationship or celebrity skills built from source material you supply.
• Maintenance: add new files to an existing profile, correct it, show your skills, roll back or delete them.

Install the distilly skill in Claude Code or the Claude apps

You can install from the download on this page or from the repository. Two routes are described in the source for Claude.

For Claude Code, download the ZIP from this page and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/ for a personal install, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder to limit it to one project. The folder should end up named distilly.

In the Claude apps, you can instead upload the skill under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal install: ~/.claude/skills/distilly
• Project install: .claude/skills/distilly inside your project
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload

Install the other supported hosts

Distilly also lists installs for other agent hosts. The install guide in the repository gives a git clone pattern with the destination directory named distilly. Use the path that matches your host.

Check the install guide for your host before copying files, because some hosts need an extra trust step or use a different folder.

• Codex: ~/.agents/skills/distilly or .agents/skills/distilly
• OpenClaw: ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/distilly
• Hermes: ~/.hermes/skills/openclaw-imports/distilly, or .hermes/skills/distilly after running hermes skills trust
• Pi coding agent: invoke with /skill:distilly
• Grok Bot cannot import this directory directly, so do not treat this repository as a Grok Bot install

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special syntax. Describe what you want in plain language and the agent picks the matching flow. In Claude Code, Hermes, DeepSeek Harness and Grok Build you can also type /distilly. Requests for owner setup, creating a profile, updating one, or managing generated skills each route to a different part of the skill.

If you have used a previous name, note that Distilly was formerly called Colleague Skill / colleague-skill. The current name is distilly.

• Owner setup: "Set up my profile", "Get to know me", "Who am I to you"
• Create: "I want to distill someone", "Make a skill for XX"
• Update: "I have new files", "That's wrong", "He should be..."
• Manage: "Show my skills", or ask to roll back or delete a generated skill

Create a Person Profile step by step

Start by giving the agent the material you are allowed to use about the person, such as text you have written down or exported yourself. The skill asks which kind of profile you want: colleague, relationship or celebrity. For a celebrity, it uses a separate research flow.

The agent writes the output through its bundled writer, so files land in ./skills/colleague/{slug}/, ./skills/relationship/{slug}/ or ./skills/celebrity/{slug}/ in your workspace. Treat the generated profile as a draft to check, not as a fact sheet.

• Gather only material you have the right to use.
• Tell the agent the profile type and a name or slug.
• Review the generated profile and correct it with a follow-up request.

Know what it needs and what it runs

The core skill needs Python 3, because scripts run through python3. Some importers can pull data from other platforms. Those are optional, and their libraries are listed in requirements-optional.txt. If you use an importer, its app credentials or account are entered by you in your own terminal, not in the chat.

The skill runs scripts and uses the network. Read the scripts before you run them and decide whether you are comfortable with that.

• Python 3 is required.
• Optional collector libraries are listed in requirements-optional.txt.
• Credentials for importers go in your own terminal via the collector's --setup or --login step, never in chat.
• Scripts run and network access is used, so review them first.

Safety and privacy notes

Do not use this skill to build a profile of a private person without their knowledge or consent. This raises privacy and personal-data concerns. Profiles are generated from the text you supply, so they can be wrong or misleading, and they should not be treated as a verified or accurate representation of a real person.

If you do not want scripts run or data fetched from external collectors, do not use the importers. The importers can use network access and credentials.

• Use only material you are permitted to use.
• Do not rely on a profile as an accurate account of a real person.
• Skip importers if you do not want network access or credential-based collection.