Skills

Supporting documentation for Varra, Syntur’s core engine. Skills are one of Varra’s capabilities, not its identity and not Syntur’s: Varra reasons broadly by default and reaches for specialist depth when a general answer is not good enough.

Where a Skill sits

A Skill is one layer of Varra, not the whole of it. It is worth seeing the stack before the catalog, because a page listing twenty specialisms reads as though specializing were the point, and it is not — it is one of the things the system does on the way to something useful.

• General intelligence — understands the task. Live
• Router — works out what the task actually needs. Built, staged
• Work Items — hold one piece of work together across steps. Live, nothing automatic
• Specialist Skills — understand the domain. Modes live Packs staged
• Company context — understands how one business runs. Planned
• Varra Assurance — works out what can be trusted. Partly live
• Runtime — eventually carries out approved work. Mostly foundations

A Skill makes the Skills row good. The rows around it are what turn a good answer into work somebody can act on — and most of them are not built yet.

What a Skill is

A Skill is a named body of domain instruction the engine can load for one request: what the domain's failure modes are, which figures have to be checked rather than recalled, what a competent answer in that field is expected to contain, and where the answer must stop. It is not a separate model and not a separate product. The same Varra identity answers either way — a Skill changes the depth and the discipline of the answer, not who is answering.

That matters for the thing most people actually do with AI, which is ask about whatever is in front of them. A question about a rebate letter, a supplier contract and a cash-flow statement should not require three tools and three logins.

Two mechanisms, honestly described

Specialist depth reaches Varra by two routes today, and they are at different stages. Both are described here as they actually are rather than merged into one claim:

• Work modes — live. Sixteen domain modes ship in the product now. You pick one, and it replaces the working context for the conversation: its own system prompt, its own cautions, and for three of them a verified reference table that overrides the model's own figure. This is what you can use this afternoon.
• Skill packs — built, staged. Eight Skill descriptors are registered and enabled in the engine's routing registry, with their own eval set. They are selected by the router rather than by you, and they can compose with one another. Three of them, Electrical Troubleshooting, HVAC Diagnostics and Construction Invoice Audit, are currently approved for application when Router mode is active; the other five are registered but not applied. The router’s source default is off, and this page does not assert its production setting.

The direction is for the second to absorb the first: you describe the work, and Varra determines what the work needs. Choosing your own mode is the current state, not the destination.

Choosing a mode

The catalog

Everything below either exists in the engine now or is a genuinely planned direction, and each entry says which. Nothing on this page is listed because it would round out a category.

Live in the product today   Staged built and tested, not on by default   Planned intended, not built

Business & operations

First, because this is where the built Skill packs are: work where a specific document, a specific number and a specific company rule all have to agree before an answer is worth anything.

General and everyday

Varra is a generalist first. General mode — research, writing, analysis, planning, ordinary questions — is the default every conversation starts in.

Technology

Technical work modes

Twelve further modes, each Live and selectable by hand: Electrical, HVAC, Carpentry, Plumbing, Welding, Masonry & Concrete, Roofing, Drywall & Paint, Landscaping, Small Engine, Appliance Repair and Automotive. They are reference examples of how a mode can defer to checked values, not a statement of what Syntur is for.

• Electrical carries verified reference data and has a Staged troubleshooting Skill, approved for active routing.
• HVAC has a Staged diagnostics Skill, approved for active routing.
• Carpentry carries verified reference data.

Skills compose

Real work rarely sits inside one domain. A disputed construction invoice is a document question and a finance question at once. So a Skill pack declares which other packs it can run alongside, and the registry carries those relationships rather than leaving them implied:

• Construction Invoice Audit composes with Document Evidence Analysis.
• Document Evidence Analysis composes with Financial Analysis and Investment Research.
• Financial Analysis and Investment Research compose with each other.
• Electrical Troubleshooting composes with HVAC Diagnostics.
• Operational Exception Analysis and Operational Financial Impact compose with each other, and each declares Construction Invoice Audit and Document Evidence Analysis.

That is the mechanism a single assistant needs and a folder of separate assistants cannot have. It is also worth being precise about what it is not: composition means two Skills can inform one answer to one request. It is not a workflow engine, it does not run a sequence of steps on its own, and nothing in the registry executes anything. A piece of work that spans several domains is still one conversation with a person in it.

A Skill decides how a task should be handled and what a good answer contains. It is not how Varra reaches a system, and it is not what carries out an action — that is Runtime, a separate layer whose foundations exist in the engine. Its one part in the product is sending an approved plain-text email through Gmail, for eligible accounts. Today every Skill ends in an answer.

What is deliberately missing

A mode existing is not the same as that mode's numbers being checked. Three of the sixteen carry verified reference data, which is the honest version of the coverage claim — the full accounting is on the Assurance page.

Widening checked coverage is part of the development direction.

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