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Skills

• Last updated: July 23, 2026

• Read time: 2 Minutes

Skills are focused testing techniques written by PortSwigger's Research team that extend what Burp AT knows how to do.

Burp AT uses skills automatically. As it works, it evaluates your goal and its testing methodology, and decides if and when to invoke skills from its library without you having to step in.

What are skills?

A skill is a combination of a prompt and accompanying code. This combination gives Burp AT context on how to approach a problem, and enables it to tackle that problem in a reliable, repeatable way. Skills give Burp AT a growing library of proven techniques to draw on, taken straight from PortSwigger's cutting-edge research.

Skills are published and updated automatically. You don't need to update Burp to take advantage of new skills.

Skills and permissions

Skills can potentially combine multiple Burp tools. For example, a single skill might use Repeater and Intruder as part of the same technique.

Skills are subject to the same permissions and autonomy settings as the rest of Burp AT. If a skill attempts to use a tool that requires approval, you are prompted in the same way as you would be if Burp AT was using those tools outside of a skill.

Seeing when a skill is used

When Burp AT uses a skill, it shows a banner under its response. Expand this banner to see a list of the skills that Burp AT ran when generating the response. Select an individual skill to see an overview of what the skill did and the tools it called.

Disabling a skill

Skills are enabled by default. To disable a skill, click the options menu next to the skill where it appears in the task, and select Disable skill. Disabling a skill applies across all tasks in the current project and takes effect on your next prompt. If you disable a skill while it's running, the skill finishes its current action.

To re-enable a skill, select Settings > Skills and click Re-enable on the skill.