Guide · AI on WhatsApp · For the owner deciding what Meta's agent does and can look up

Skills and connectors for Meta's AI agent on WhatsApp: how it is told to behave and how it checks your own systems

What Meta's AI agent knows comes from the business details, FAQs, files and website it is given. How it behaves, and what it can look up, is set elsewhere: in skills, which tell it what to do in a given situation, and in connectors, which let it ask the business's own systems a question. Meta's developer pages set out how both work.

Published 7 October 2026

Skills: how the agent is told to behave

A skill: A named instruction for one situation. It has a line saying when it applies and a body saying what the agent should do then. Meta says the agent checks the conversation against every skill and follows the ones whose conditions match.
How long they can be: Meta allows a name of up to 64 characters, a when-it-applies line of up to 1,024 characters and instructions of up to 20,000 characters.
With no skills at all: Meta says deleting every skill does not switch the agent off. It goes back to its default behaviour and keeps answering from what it was taught.

Skills that do not fight each other

Meta says the agent follows skills as written, so they should read as clear directions. Its warning is about overlap: if two skills both claim to come first in the same situation, the agent may send duplicate or inconsistent replies. When several things should happen at the same moment, Meta says to put them in one skill, in order, and to read the skills already there before adding another.

Our reading

One skill for a customer's first message, with the greeting, the question about what they need and the menu of options in that order, works better than three skills that each say they go first. A second skill for returns, with its own when-it-applies line, sits beside it without clashing.

Connectors: letting it check your own systems

A connector points the agent at an outside system the business already runs, such as an order or booking system, and says how to sign in to it. Meta's page lists three ways: a sign-in the other system issues to the business, a key, or none. Each connector holds tools, and each tool is one thing the agent can ask that system to do. Meta says the agent chooses a tool by its description during the conversation, and that a connector with no tools is never used. A connector can also point at a server built on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for linking AI to other software, and the business can ask Meta to refresh the tools it finds there.

Sending buttons, lists, carousels and forms is set up separately, as covered in the buttons and lists guide.

Before it goes live, and once it is live

Meta lets each tool be run as a test, which returns the outside system's own answer, so the business can see that the sign-in and the request work before the agent relies on them with a customer. Once it is live, each connector keeps an error log covering the last seven days. Meta says the log only holds errors that came from the outside system, can show the success rate and response times, and can rank the most common failures. Removing one tool stops the agent using it and leaves the connector's other tools in place. Switching the whole agent off is covered in the settings guide.

Questions

Two of our skills both say they go first. What happens?

Meta warns the agent may send duplicate or inconsistent replies. Its advice is to merge them into one skill with the steps in order.

If we delete all the skills, does the agent stop answering?

No. Meta says it falls back to its default behaviour and keeps answering from its business details, FAQs, files and website. To stop it, switch the agent off.

Can the agent look up an order in our own system?

That is what connectors are for. The business adds a connector for its system and a tool for the lookup, and Meta says the agent picks that tool when the conversation calls for it.

How do we know if our system is letting the agent down?

Each connector's error log shows the last seven days of errors that came from the outside system, with its success rate, response times and the most common failures.

Sources

Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent Agent Skills, read 7 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent Connectors, read 7 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent Connector Tools, read 7 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent UI Skills, read 7 October 2026.

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

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