Docs/Context Studio/Domain Skills

Domain Skills

Author plain-English context that Orion reads before answering questions in each business domain.

LuminaryWeaverUpdated June 2026 · 6 min read

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In this section

Part of Celiq's semantic layer platform. Connect your warehouse, model your data once, query it everywhere.

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Tip

What it is: A per-domain editor where you write natural-language instructions that teach Orion how to think about a business area — its rules, quirks, and conventions.
When to use it: When Orion gets a domain detail wrong (a date timezone, a fiscal calendar, what a metric excludes) and you want to correct its understanding for every future question.
Where to find it: Context Studio → AI Context → Domain Skills.
Who can use it: Weaver and Luminary.

Orion already understands your semantic model — the domains, nodes, metrics, and dimensions you build in Forge. Domain Skills add the part the model can't express on its own: the business context a human analyst carries in their head. You write it once, in plain English, and Orion reads it whenever it answers a question scoped to that domain.

Overview

Each published domain gets one skill — a free-text block of instructions Orion treats as authoritative context for that area. The Domain Skills tab shows a pill for every domain across the top; click a pill to load that domain's skill into the editor below. You edit the text, click Save changes, and Orion picks up the new content on its next question.

Skills are stored per workspace and per domain. The header above the editor shows when the skill was last updated and who changed it, so a team of Weavers and Luminaries can see at a glance whether the context is current.

These are knowledge skills in the Skill Registry. Celiq's registry holds two kinds of capability: compute skills (the live tools Orion can invoke) and knowledge skills (authored context like the ones you write here). Both surface through the same registry, which means the context you author on this tab is the same content Orion sees everywhere it works.

When to use it

Orion keeps misreading a domain convention — for example, it treats your fiscal year as the calendar year, or reports revenue including refunds when your team excludes them.
A domain has data quirks a newcomer wouldn't know: a column that is stored in UTC, a status value that means something non-obvious, a set of test accounts that should be filtered out.
You want every analyst's questions in a domain to inherit the same definitions, so answers stay consistent no matter who asks.
You've published a new domain in Forge and want to give Orion the business framing before people start asking questions against it.

Concepts

Term	What it means
Domain skill	The plain-English instructions Orion reads for one domain. One skill per domain per workspace.
Domain pill	The selector chips across the top of the tab. Each pill is one published domain; the active pill is highlighted.
Knowledge skill	The registry category these belong to — authored context, as opposed to compute skills, which are live tools.
updated_at / updated_by	The timestamp and author of the most recent save, shown above the editor.
Auto-creation	Domain skills appear automatically when a domain is published in Forge — you don't create them by hand.

Getting started

You need a Weaver or Luminary role, and you need at least one published domain. Domain skills are created automatically when you publish a domain in Forge — until then, the tab shows "No domain skills yet." If you see that empty state, publish a domain first, then return here.

To open the tab: go to Context Studio, open the AI Context group in the left rail, and click Domain Skills.

Step-by-step

Open Domain Skills

In Context Studio, expand AI Context in the left navigation and select Domain Skills. The page loads every published domain as a pill across the top and opens the first one in the editor.

Select a domain

Click the pill for the domain you want to document. The editor below switches to that domain's current content, and the header shows when it was last updated and by whom.

Write the context

Type plain-English instructions into the editor — business rules, date and timezone logic, fiscal calendar, known data quirks, and any values that should be excluded. Write as if briefing a new analyst on their first day.

Save changes

Click Save changes. The button is disabled until you've made an edit, so an unchanged skill can't be re-saved by accident. While the save is in flight the button reads "Saving…"; on success a green Saved indicator appears next to it for a couple of seconds.

Verify it took effect

Ask Orion a question scoped to that domain. Orion picks up the new content on its next question — there's no separate publish step for skills.

Examples

A worked skill for an Orders domain. Notice that it states what a metric excludes, pins down the timezone and fiscal calendar, and names the records to filter out — the three things that trip Orion up most often.

Orders domain — context for Orion

Definitions
- "Revenue" means net revenue: it EXCLUDES refunds and chargebacks. If someone
  asks for gross sales, say so explicitly and use the gross_sales metric instead.
- "Active customer" means a customer with at least one paid order in the last
  90 days. A signup with no paid order is NOT an active customer.

Dates & calendar
- order_date is stored in UTC. When a user asks about "today" or "this week",
  interpret it in America/Los_Angeles (Pacific) time.
- Our fiscal year starts February 1. "Q1" means Feb–Apr, not Jan–Mar.

Exclusions
- Exclude internal test accounts: any customer whose email ends in @example-qa.com.
- Exclude orders with status = 'void' from all revenue and count metrics.

After saving this, a question like "what was revenue this quarter?" will be answered against the fiscal quarter, net of refunds, with test accounts and voided orders removed.

Best practices

Be specific about exclusions. "Revenue excludes refunds and chargebacks" is far more useful to Orion than "Revenue is total sales." Vague context produces vague answers.
Always pin down dates. State the storage timezone, the timezone to interpret relative dates in, and the fiscal calendar. These are the most common source of wrong answers.
Name the records to filter. If test accounts, voided orders, or internal users should never appear in results, say so explicitly.
One concern per line or short paragraph. Skills are easier to review and keep current when each rule stands on its own.
Keep skills current after model changes. When you rename or redefine a metric in Forge, update the matching skill so the prose and the model agree.

Tips

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Tip

Write the skill the way you'd brief a new analyst on their first day: the definitions they'd get wrong, the calendar they'd misread, and the rows they'd forget to exclude. If a sentence wouldn't change how a careful human reads the data, Orion probably doesn't need it either.

Common mistakes

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Warning

Restating the model. Listing metrics and dimensions that Forge already defines adds noise. Document the business context the model can't capture, not the schema.
Leaving timezone implicit. If you don't state how to interpret "today" or "this week," Orion will guess — and it often guesses UTC.
Forgetting fiscal calendars. A fiscal year that doesn't start in January is invisible to Orion unless you write it down.
Editing the wrong domain. Confirm the active pill matches the domain you mean to change before you save — each domain has its own separate skill.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Tab shows "No domain skills yet."	No domains are published in this workspace.	Publish a domain in Forge; skills are created automatically on publish.
"Save changes" button is greyed out.	You haven't changed the text — the button is disabled until the draft differs from the saved content.	Make an edit, or if nothing needs changing, leave it as-is.
Edits don't seem to affect Orion's answers.	Orion only reads the new content on its next question, and only for questions scoped to that domain.	Save, then ask a fresh question in that domain. Confirm you edited the right domain pill.
Header shows no "Updated … by …" line.	This domain's skill has never been saved in this workspace — it's still showing default content.	Save once to record an `updated_at` / `updated_by` and create the workspace copy.
The whole tab shows "Loading skills…" and never finishes.	The skills list failed to load.	Reload the page; if it persists, confirm you have Weaver or Luminary access to this workspace.

Skill Registry — see every capability Orion can invoke, including the knowledge skills you author here.
Forge — where domains are built and published, which is what creates a domain skill.
Corrections — fix specific wrong answers; complements the broad context you set in skills.
Orion — the AI layer that reads these skills when it answers questions.