Understanding Topics and Skills in ServiceNow Now AssistSummary<!-- /*NS Branding Styles*/ --> .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } In ServiceNow Now Assist, a Skill and a Topic work together to deliver AI-driven experiences such as Incident Summarization. Although they are closely related, they serve different purposes within the architecture. For example, the Incident Summarization Topic invokes the same out-of-box (OOB) Incident Summarization Skill. Skill : A Skill is the core AI capability that performs the actual task.For Incident Summarization, the Skill contains: Prompt logicField mappingsGenerative AI configurationSummary generation behavior Topic : A Topic acts as the entry point or orchestrator. It: Detects the user request or triggerCollects contextInvokes the SkillDisplays the generated response Flow : The interaction flow works as follows: User Intent / Trigger → Topic → Skill → Generated Summary → Topic displays result to user Why They Are Separate : This design provides flexibility and reusability: The same Skill can be reused across multiple Topics or workflows.Skills and Topics can be customized independently.Custom Topics can invoke the same OOB Skill with different business logic or audience targeting. In short : Skill = Performs the AI taskTopic = Manages the interaction and invokes the Skill