Custom skills: an AI video maker for your own kind of video
A custom skill is an AI video maker built for the one kind of video you make again and again. Why niche videos need one, what it changes, and how to get one.
By the Chasca team 6 min read
A custom skill is an AI video maker built for the one kind of video you make again and again. It knows your format: how the video opens, what goes on screen and in what order, how long it runs and how it ends. All you give it is the topic. On Chasca, the Pro, Max and Team plans can ask for one, and most accepted requests are ready within 24 hours.
Why do general AI video tools fall short for niche videos?
Because they are built to make anything, they make everything the same way. Type a topic and you get a reasonable explainer: an introduction, a few points, a summary. For a one-off video that is often enough.
It stops being enough the moment your videos have rules, and most videos people make every week do. A coaching class always shows the shortcut before the full method, because that is what students pay for. A pharmacy explains every medicine in the same three parts, so customers know where to look. A safety officer always shows the wrong way before the right way. A language teacher’s word of the day always has the root, two examples and a quiz.
Those rules are the format, and the format is what your viewers learn to recognise and trust. To get them from a general tool, you write long instructions every time, check every video for the parts it forgot, and fix the same things again and again. The tool never learns, because it isn’t built for your kind of video. It is built for everyone’s.
What is a skill?
A skill is a fixed recipe for one kind of video. It decides how the script is written, what the screen looks like and the format, so you only bring the topic or your material.
Chasca’s thirteen skills show what that means in practice. The maths problems skill keeps the question on the board while every line of working is written as it is said. The safety cartoon skill always shows the wrong way, then the right way, then a quiz. Slides to lesson narrates your own deck with a pointer on what is being said. Nothing about a skill is a template you fill in by hand: you type a sentence or drop a file, and the video comes back finished.
A custom skill is the same thing, built around your format instead of a common one.
What does a skill of your own change?
Every video of that kind comes out the same way. Same structure, same look, same pace, whether you make one a week or fifty a month. A series finally feels like a series.
You stop writing prompts. The rules live in the skill, so a one-line topic is enough. Whoever on your team makes the next video gets the same result.
Your format travels. A skill works in every language Chasca speaks, with the narration written for that language rather than translated word for word. A format that works for your viewers in English can reach viewers in Spanish, Arabic or Hindi without being rebuilt.
Videos take minutes. A video made with a skill is made like any other Chasca video and uses your plan’s minutes. There is nothing extra to pay for using your own skill.
How a video is made matters for whether people watch it. In a study of 6.9 million edX viewing sessions, Philip Guo and colleagues found that the way a video was produced changed how long people kept watching, not only its topic or length. And a meta-analysis of 103 studies by Sascha Schneider and colleagues found that cues guiding attention, such as highlights and pointers, helped people learn. A skill is a way to get those choices right once and keep them in every video.
What could a custom skill make?
Any one kind of video with a shape you can describe. A few examples of what people could ask for:
- A coaching institute: past exam questions solved with the shortcut first, then the full method, then the trap most students fall into.
- A pharmacy chain: a one-minute card for each medicine: what it is for, how to take it, and what to avoid with it.
- A driving school: one road sign a day, with what it means and the mistake learners make with it.
- A language teacher: a word of the day with its root, two everyday examples and a three-question quiz.
- An HR team: a policy change in under a minute: what changes, from when, and who to ask.
- A children’s channel: a bedtime fable with a painted picture for every beat and the moral said at the end.
What these have in common is repetition. A custom skill pays off when the same kind of video is made again and again, by you or by your team.
How do you get a custom skill on Chasca?
- Tell us about your video. In the app, open Skills and choose Request a skill. Describe the video you make again and again, who watches it, how often you make one, and add a link to one you like if you have it.
- We review it. Every request is read, and we take on the ones that fit how Chasca makes videos. If we can’t build it, the request is given back to you with a short note on why.
- We build it. Most accepted skills are ready within 24 hours. The app shows where your request stands the whole time.
- Make videos with it. Your skill sits with the others. Pick it, give it a topic or your file, choose a language, and the video comes back finished.
Custom skills come with the paid plans from Pro up: Pro includes 1 custom skill a month, Max 3 and Team 5. Requests renew with the plan each month and don’t roll over.
What can’t a custom skill do?
Chasca makes clear, narrated videos quickly and at a fair price, and every skill has to keep it that way. So a custom skill is built from the kinds of pictures Chasca already draws: board explainers with diagrams, graphs and tables, worked problems with a pointer, painted pictures for stories, cut-out cartoon casts, and your own slides or pages, narrated.
It can’t make 3D animation, filmed or live-action footage, screen recordings, talking avatars or lip-synced presenters, or copies of another creator’s characters, brand or style. When a request needs one of those, it is declined and given back, so it still counts for another skill.
Is a custom skill private?
No, and that is deliberate. A skill Chasca builds joins its skills library, so everyone can use it. It’s how the library grows: each new skill starts as one person’s kind of video, and the next person with the same need finds it already there. Leave anything confidential out of your request. The files you upload and the videos you make stay private to your account.
We may also shape a skill so it works for everyone who uses it, adjusting the look, length or wording while keeping to what you asked for.
The short version
A general AI video maker is a good start for anything. A skill is better for one thing, and a custom skill is better for your thing: your format, kept in every video, in every language, made in minutes. If you make the same kind of video again and again, describe it once and let the skill remember it. Read how custom skills work.
Questions people ask
A video maker built for the one kind of video you make again and again. It keeps your format, how the video opens, what goes on screen and in what order, how long it runs and how it ends, so you only give it the topic.
A general tool is built to make anything, so it makes everything the same way. For a format with rules you end up writing long instructions every time and fixing the same things in every video. A skill keeps the rules for you.
On the Pro, Max and Team plans, open Skills in the app and choose Request a skill. Describe the video, who watches it and how often you make one. Every request is reviewed, and most accepted skills are ready within 24 hours.
Pro includes 1 custom skill a month, Max 3 and Team 5. Requests renew with the plan each month and don't roll over, and a request that can't be built is given back.
No. A custom skill Chasca builds joins its skills library, so everyone can use it. The files you upload and the videos you make stay private.
Chasca doesn't make 3D animation, filmed or live-action footage, screen recordings, talking avatars or copies of another creator's characters or style. Custom skills are built from what Chasca draws, such as board explainers, worked problems, painted pictures, cut-out cartoons and narrated slides.
