Govern skills
A skill is a first-class Unity Catalog securable in the three-level namespace (catalog.schema.skill). You control who can create, update, read, and share skills through the same catalogs, schemas, and grants that protect the rest of your data.
If you author or use skills rather than administer them, see Create and share skills and Discover and use skills.
Skills are in Beta. An account administrator must enable the Unity AI preview from the account console Previews page before anyone in the account can create or use skills. See Manage Databricks previews.
Set up a governed schema for skills
Skills live in a Unity Catalog schema, so decide which catalog and schema will hold them before you grant access. A common pattern is a dedicated catalog (for example, skills) with one schema per domain or team (sql_skills, etl_skills), which keeps grants and discovery simple.
The schema must be backed by a standard Unity Catalog catalog (not a foreign or federated one) and must resolve to a managed storage location, otherwise skill creation fails. Skill contents are stored in Unity Catalog-managed storage, using the schema's managed location, or the catalog's, or the metastore storage root, in that order. See Specify a managed storage location in Unity Catalog.
Grant access to skills
Skills use the standard Unity Catalog privilege model. Because skills keep their contents in Unity Catalog-managed object storage, much like volumes, you govern them with the volume privileges CREATE VOLUME, WRITE VOLUME, and READ VOLUME. To reach any skill, a principal first needs traversal privileges on the containing catalog and schema.
Privilege | Grant it to | What it allows |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone who works with skills | Traverse the catalog that contains the skill schema. |
| Everyone who works with skills | Traverse the schema that contains the skills. |
| Skill authors | Create new skills in the schema. |
| Skill authors | Upload and update the contents of a skill. |
| Skill consumers | Read a skill's metadata and download its contents. This is the privilege you grant to share a skill. |
Grant these privileges from Catalog Explorer on the catalog and schema, the same way you grant access to other securables. See Manage privileges in Unity Catalog.
The user who creates a skill is its owner. Only the owner, or a principal with MANAGE on the skill, can change its grants, so sharing a skill on behalf of others requires ownership or MANAGE.
Sharing a skill is a Unity Catalog grant, not a copy. When you grant READ VOLUME, the consumer's agent reads the live skill under your grants and audit. There's no separate share step and nothing is duplicated. For how consumers then load a shared skill or a whole schema, see Discover and use skills.
Account and compliance considerations
- Workspace-to-metastore assignment: skills are only reachable from workspaces assigned to the metastore that holds them, following the same assignment rules as your other Unity Catalog data.
- Compliance Security Profile: in workspaces that enforce the Compliance Security Profile (for example, HIPAA), creating, updating, and deleting skills is blocked. Reading skills that already exist is still allowed.
Audit skill activity
Unity Catalog records control-plane operations on skills, including create, update, delete, read, and permission changes. Use this audit trail to review who created or modified a skill and who was granted access. To query Unity Catalog audit logs, see Audit log system table reference.
Next steps
- Create and share skills to develop a skill locally and publish it to a governed schema.
- Discover and use skills to find and load skills your teams have shared.
- AI governance with Unity AI Gateway to govern AI traffic, MCP servers, and skills from a central location.