Create and manage AI agent instructions

Give your AI agents skills and rules to help keep them on-brand and on-policy.

Instructions help guide AI agents by giving them context about your design system, your voice and tone, your CMS, and your policies and requirements. They come in two types — skills and rules — and they're stored with your site, so AI tools connected through the MCP (Model Context Protocol) server can reference them.

Understand skills and rules

Skills and rules are both agent instructions, but each works a little differently:

• Skills are freeform guidance that describes how to work — your writing style, how to use your design system, or the approach you'd want an agent to take for a particular kind of task. An agent should reference the skill when it's relevant to your request, or when you point it to one directly.
• Rules are short, fixed criteria that apply to every action an agent takes in your site. Use them for the non-negotiables that should hold true no matter what an agent is working on.

Both skills and rules are stored with your site, so they stay available between sessions and the agents working in your site can use them.

Reference your design system and content

Inside a skill or rule, you can insert references to the resources you've already built in Webflow. In the editor, open the reference menu from the toolbar, choose a type, then the specific resource. Webflow inserts a reference token and resolves it when an agent reads the instruction — so the agent works with your current details instead of a copy that can drift out of date.

You can reference design-system resources like variables, style selectors, components, assets, and interactions; content like pages, CMS items, and locales; and even other skills and rules.

This is what lets an instruction say something like "use our brand colors and heading styles" and have an agent apply the actual values from your design system.

Import and export instructions

You can import instructions to Webflow. Files must be in .zip format and only .md and .mdc files are imported. Skills and rules can be inside a folder or at the zip root. We recommend structuring your zip file like this:

instructions.zip
├── skills/
│   └── skill-name/
│       ├── SKILL.md
│       └── references/
├── skill-name/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── rules/
│   └── rule.md
└── rule.mdc

To import instructions:

1. Open the Instructions panel from the left toolbar
2. Click the "import instructions" icon at the top of the panel
3. Drag and drop or click to select your zip file
4. Click Import
5. Review the imported files
6. Click Done

Export instructions

To export all instructions from Webflow:

1. Open the Instructions panel from the left toolbar
2. Click the "export instructions" icon at the top of the panel

You can also export individual instructions by hovering over the instruction, clicking the "more actions" icon, and choosing Export.

Create skills in Webflow

You can generate skills from your existing site, import a skill, or create one from scratch.

Generate skills from your site

Webflow can analyze your site and generate the following types of skills:

• Brand Guidelines — guidance for writing and editing content using your site's brand voice, tone, and messaging
• Design System — guidance for using the components, variables, colors, and spacing in your site
• Asset Guidelines — guidance for using your site's assets, logos, colors, and visual style
• CMS Guidelines — guidance for creating consistent content in a specific CMS Collection

To generate skills from your site:

1. Open the Instructions panel from the left toolbar
2. Click the "plus" icon in the Skills section
3. Under Autogenerate skills, choose the types of skills you want to generate
4. If you select CMS Guidelines, choose up to five CMS Collections at a time
5. Click Generate
6. Toggle the skill On at the top of the SKILL.md document when it's ready to use

Webflow generates the selected skills in the background and notifies you as each skill is ready. If you select multiple CMS Collections, Webflow creates a separate skill for each Collection.

Create or import a skill

To create a skill manually:

1. Open the Instructions panel from the left toolbar
2. Click the "plus" icon in the Skills section
3. Choose Blank skill
4. Write your guidance in the SKILL.md file
5. (Optional) Insert references or add supporting files to the skill
6. Toggle the skill On at the top of the SKILL.md document when it's ready to use

You can also choose Import skill to import an existing skill.

Create rules in Webflow

You can create a blank rule or start with a prewritten template. Available templates include:

• SEO defaults — add meta titles, descriptions, and alt text on every page
• Naming — use kebab-case class names following a list of permitted and restricted words
• Accessibility — follow accessibility guidance for contrast, focus states, and screen readers

To create a rule:

1. Open the Instructions panel from the left toolbar
2. Click the "plus" icon in the Rules section
3. Choose a rule template, or choose Blank rule to start from scratch
4. Review and edit the rule in the editor
5. Toggle the rule On at the top of the document when it's ready to use

Manage skills and rules

To edit a skill or rule's guidance, open it from the Instructions panel and make your changes in the editor. You can use the formatting toolbar or switch to code view to edit the Markdown directly.

A skill is a folder containing a main SKILL.md file. You can add supporting files, such as images or additional Markdown files, for agents to reference.

Hover over a skill or rule and click the "more actions" dots to:

• Edit skill settings or Edit rule settings — update its name and description
• Edit with AIA (AI Assistant) — make changes using AI (only available on sites created with the AI site builder)
• Export — save it to your device
• Rename — give it a new name
• Delete — remove it from your site

Create and manage instructions through the Webflow MCP server

You can also work with instructions through the Webflow MCP server, so a connected AI tool can read, create, update, and delete your skills and rules directly. For example, ask your agent, "list the agent instructions in my [site name] site" — it returns the skills and rules for that site.

Learn how to connect your AI tool to the Webflow MCP server.

Use your instructions

Your instructions can be used by the Webflow AI Assistant and third-party AI tools connected through the MCP server. Agents should always read your rules before taking any action in your site, and reference skills when they're relevant to your request.

You can also point an agent to a specific skill. When you want it to reference one, name it in your request — for example, "Use the [skill name] skill to draft this page."

Share instructions across your sites

Agent instructions are a Shared Library resource, like components and variables. When you add instructions to a Shared Library, you can install them on the other sites in your Workspace and push updates from one place — so a brand lead can keep a single set of instructions and roll it out everywhere it's needed.

Roles and permissions

Who can read and manage agent instructions depends on a teammate's site role:

• Site managers and Designers can read and manage instructions — creating, editing, and deleting them
• Marketers and Content editors can read instructions, but can't change them

Reviewers can't read instructions, and access can't currently be changed for custom roles.

Learn more

• Webflow MCP server overview
• Webflow AI overview