Define the custom skill schema

• 3 minutes

Your custom skill must implement the expected schema for input and output data that is expected by skills in an Azure AI Search skillset.

Input schema

The input schema for a custom skill defines a JSON structure containing a record for each document to be processed. Each document has a unique identifier, and a data payload with one or more inputs, like this:

{
    "values": [
      {
        "recordId": "<unique_identifier>",
        "data":
           {
             "<input1_name>":  "<input1_value>",
             "<input2_name>": "<input2_value>",
             ...
           }
      },
      {
        "recordId": "<unique_identifier>",
        "data":
           {
             "<input1_name>":  "<input1_value>",
             "<input2_name>": "<input2_value>",
             ...
           }
      },
      ...
    ]
}

Output schema

The schema for the results returned by your custom skill reflects the input schema. It's assumed that the output contains a record for each input record, with either the results produced by the skill or details of any errors that occurred.

{
    "values": [
      {
        "recordId": "<unique_identifier_from_input>",
        "data":
           {
             "<output1_name>":  "<output1_value>",
              ...
           },
         "errors": [...],
         "warnings": [...]
      },
      {
        "recordId": "< unique_identifier_from_input>",
        "data":
           {
             "<output1_name>":  "<output1_value>",
              ...
           },
         "errors": [...],
         "warnings": [...]
      },
      ...
    ]
}

The output value in this schema is a property bag that can contain any JSON structure, reflecting the fact that index fields aren't necessarily simple data values, but can contain complex types.