> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.abbyy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Working with skills

> Understand how skills work in ABBYY Vantage, choose the right design tool for your task, and find guides for the most common skill-building workflows.

Skills are the core building blocks of ABBYY Vantage: trained, reusable units that classify documents, extract data, or orchestrate an end-to-end processing workflow. Everything you process in Vantage runs through a skill.

## Choose your starting point

How you work with skills depends on how much customization you need:

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Skill Catalog" icon="grid" href="/vantage/documentation/skill-catalog/skill-catalog">
    Start with a pre-trained skill for common document types like invoices, receipts, and tax forms. No training required.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Skill Designer" icon="pen-ruler" href="/vantage/documentation/skill-designer/skill-designer">
    Build and customize skills in the browser: define fields, set up business rules, and assemble processing workflows.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Advanced Designer" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/vantage/documentation/advanced-designer/introduction">
    Use the desktop application for complex extraction logic: custom activities, extraction rules, FlexiLayouts, and prompt-based LLM extraction.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

**Rule of thumb:** check the [Skill Catalog](/vantage/documentation/skill-catalog/skill-catalog) first. If a pre-trained skill covers your document type, derive from it and adjust, which is far faster than training from scratch. Use [Skill Designer](/vantage/documentation/skill-designer/skill-designer) for most custom skills, and reach for [Advanced Designer](/vantage/documentation/advanced-designer/introduction) when you need extraction logic the browser tool cannot express.

Not sure whether to start from a pre-trained skill or build new? See [Choose between Base, Derived, and New skills](/vantage/documentation/skills/skill-types).

## Common tasks

Beginner-friendly, step-by-step guides for the workflows most people set up first:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Choose between Base, Derived, and New skills" icon="code-branch" href="/vantage/documentation/skills/skill-types">
    Decide which skill approach fits your document type and start with the right foundation
  </Card>

  <Card title="Process documents with SFTP" icon="file-lines" href="/vantage/documentation/skills/process-skill">
    Create a Process skill and set up automated document processing via SFTP
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure PDF Processing Mode" icon="file-pdf" href="/vantage/documentation/skills/configure-pdf-processing-mode">
    Choose the right PDF Processing Mode in OCR skills and Process skills for your documents
  </Card>

  <Card title="LLMs in ABBYY Vantage" icon="brain" href="/vantage/documentation/llms/llms">
    Understand how LLM connections and prompt-based extraction fit together, and when to use them
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure LLM connections" icon="plug" href="/vantage/documentation/skills/connections">
    Connect Vantage to OpenAI, Microsoft Foundry, or Google AI Studio for AI-powered extraction
  </Card>

  <Card title="Extract data with prompt-based activities" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/vantage/documentation/skills/prompt-extraction">
    Use natural language prompts to extract data from documents in Advanced Designer
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Before you begin

Most guides assume you have:

* Access to an ABBYY Vantage tenant
* A user account with appropriate permissions
* Basic familiarity with the document types you want to process

<Note>
  Don't have access yet? [Contact ABBYY](https://www.abbyy.com/company/contact-us/) to request a tenant or trial.
</Note>

## Related documentation

* [**Getting Started**](/vantage/getting-started/overview) - Process your first document with a guided tutorial
* [**Manual Review**](/vantage/documentation/runtime/manual-review/manual-review) - Review, correct, and verify processed documents in production
* [**Developer Guide**](/vantage/developer/getting-started) - Integrate Vantage via the REST API