How skills and nodes work in Piccaso
A skill is a reusable AI workflow you build once and run as many times as you need. Nodes are the building blocks that make it happen.
What is a skill?
A skill is a repeatable AI-powered process you define once inside Piccaso's skill builder. It takes inputs — product images, brand assets, context — runs them through a sequence of nodes, and produces consistent, on-brand visual outputs.
Once built, a skill can be run by anyone on your team, with no technical knowledge required. That's the point: you do the creative thinking once, then let it scale.
What are nodes?
Nodes are the individual steps inside a skill. Each one has a specific job — accepting an upload, selecting an asset, applying a prompt, or configuring the output. You connect them in sequence to define exactly how your skill behaves from start to finish.
Think of nodes as lego pieces. On their own they do one thing. Chained together, they produce something far more powerful.
The four core node types
Asset Library
Connects to your brand's asset folders — characters, backgrounds, poses, scenes. You define which assets are available for a given skill, and optionally let users pick from them at runtime.
Media Upload
Accepts files from the person running the skill. This is how your team or clients feed their product photos, reference images, or raw materials into the process.
LLM Node
This is where the creative direction lives. You write a base prompt that describes what to generate — subject, style, lighting, composition. You can reference other nodes using the @ syntax, so the prompt adapts dynamically based on what was uploaded or selected.
Output Configurations
Defines what comes out. File format, aspect ratio, resolution — all set at the skill level so every run produces consistently formatted assets.
How nodes connect
Each node has a connection point at its bottom edge. Draw a line from one to the next to define the flow. Piccaso executes them in order, passing data from step to step automatically.
You can also configure which steps are user-facing — some nodes run silently in the background, while others surface a control for the person running the skill.
Build once, run forever
The real value of the skill builder isn't the first run. It's the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth. Once your skill is configured, every run follows the same logic, applies the same creative direction, and produces output at the same standard.
That's what it means to build once and run forever.
