A learning pathway is an ordered route of steps towards a goal: resources from your organisation's Learnerbly catalogue, such as books, courses and articles, plus short exercises and reflections that help you put them into practice. It is sized to the hours and weeks you have, it respects your budget and the formats you prefer, and it is yours to change.
You plan it in a conversation with the Learnerbly agent, the AI learning assistant built into the Learnerbly web app.
Where to start
You can plan a pathway towards a new role ("I want to become a data analyst") or towards new skills in the role you have ("I want to get better at giving feedback"). You do not need to know your next role to start: say what you enjoy and the agent suggests two or three directions to choose from.
The agent that plans pathways is the same one that finds learning for you. Ask it for a course or a book and it searches your catalogue. Ask for a pathway, share your CV, or ask to change a step of a pathway you already have, and it hands the conversation over to its planning side; a small line appears in the chat: "Planning your pathway from here · you can carry on in your pathway later". Ask about something unrelated, such as a book on a different topic, and the conversation comes back just as quietly. Finding and requesting learning is covered in Using the Learnerbly agent: find and request learning.
In Slack, you can plan a pathway in a direct message with the Learnerbly app, where only you can see the conversation.
Not seeing learning pathways?
Learning pathways are being switched on organisation by organisation. If your Home page does not show the Plan my route to a new role and Build a skill step by step prompts, or the + button for attaching files, your organisation does not have them yet. You can still use the agent to find and request learning, and you can ask us through the chat if you would like to know more.
Start the interview
On the Home page of the Learnerbly web app, pick Plan my route to a new role or Build a skill step by step, or just say it in your own words in the chat box. If you were invited to plan your next step, you will also see a card that says "Plan your next step with us" with a Let's start button; Not now puts it away, and you can always start later from the prompts. If you already have a pathway, Plan another pathway on the Pathways page starts a fresh conversation.
The interview is a short conversation, not a form: about five to eight exchanges, one question at a time. The agent asks about:
what you do now and what you already know, in your own words;
what you want: a target role, or a skill shift in the role you have;
why you want it, and what you would like to be able to do at the end that you cannot today;
how many weeks you have and how many hours a week you can give;
your budget, preferred formats, any accessibility needs and, for in-person learning, where you are.
Every question can be skipped. If you do not know or would rather not say, say so and the agent moves on. It also starts from what Learnerbly already knows about you: your job title, the formats you chose when you signed up, your interests, the budget you have left and, if you have shared one, the skills on your CV. Instead of asking from scratch it offers these as defaults to confirm, for example "Last time you had 2 hours a week for 6 weeks. Same again?"
If you stop half-way, nothing is lost. Next time you open Home you will see "Pick up where you left off?" with Continue the brief and Build a plan from what I've said. And if you would rather not be interviewed at all, tell the agent to just build it: you get a more general plan you can refine later.
Your brief
Before anything is built, the agent reflects back what it understood as a card headed "Here's what I understood": where you are coming from and heading to, your time, your budget and formats, what you want to be able to do, the skills you'll build, any it has left out for now, and what you already bring.
Tap anything on the card to change it. Tapping a cell starts a message for you to finish ("Change my weekly hours to…"). Tapping a skill in Skills you'll build leaves it out, tapping one in Left out for now puts it back, and tapping one in You already bring tells the agent you do not have it. When the card is right, press Looks right, build my pathway, or Change something to carry on talking.
Building the pathway
Building usually takes under a minute and can take up to two. You can leave the page: your pathway will be waiting in Your pathways.
The finished pathway appears as a card in the chat: its route, the time it should take you against your target, what the resources cost against your budget, how many of your target skills it covers, and Start here, the first step with a line on why it comes first. Open your pathway takes you to its page.
If the best plan would cost more than your budget, the agent says so and offers one that fits. When you have told the agent what you want to be able to do, the last step is a short exercise that tests it, so you have something concrete to show at the end, not just a list of finished resources.
Follow and change your pathway
Your pathways are always one click away: Pathways in the top bar shows how many you have open, the Home page shows your two most recent open pathways with their next step, and See all your pathways opens the full list, open ones first.
The pathway page shows your progress, the time you have left against your target, the skills covered and the cost against your budget, then the steps in order. Each step shows its format and supplier, the skill it builds, a time estimate, its price, and a line on why it is there. View opens the resource page, where you request it as usual. Exercises and reflections have no resource: open What to do to read the task.
Track your progress
Press Start when you begin a step and Mark done when you finish; you can log how long it took, which keeps the estimate for the rest of your plan honest. Requesting a step's resource from Learnerbly counts as starting it. Skip a step you do not need, or reopen one you marked too early.
Pause keeps your steps and progress for whenever you are ready to Resume. Archive (in the ⋯ menu) closes a pathway for good: you can still read it and its history, but it can no longer be changed.
Change the steps
Each step has a ⋯ menu with everything you can do to it.
Swap it for another resource. The agent shows the alternatives it already checked, or you can ask for something specific.
Edit its title, what to do, its kind (resource, exercise or reflection) and your own hours. Edited steps are pinned, so a re-plan keeps them as you left them.
Move up and Move down to reorder, Pin to protect a step from re-planning, Set an estimate if the catalogue's is off, and Remove.
Add a step, above the list, adds an exercise or a reflection of your own. To add a course, book or other resource, ask the agent.
You can ask the agent to do any of this instead: "swap step 3 for a book", "add a podcast on delegation", "move the exercise to the end". It makes the change and shows it as a card in the chat. It asks first when a step is already started or done, because changing it resets the time you logged.
Re-plan
When what the pathway is for changes (your goal, your hours, your deadline, the formats you want), use Re-plan above the steps or tell the agent ("I now have 5 hours a week"). The agent updates your brief, confirms it with you and builds a new version, which arrives as a proposal: "A new plan is ready for you to review", with the steps kept, changed and removed. Nothing changes until you accept it, and steps you have done, started, skipped or pinned are never touched by a re-plan.
The chat on the pathway page
The panel beside the steps holds the conversation that built this pathway, so you can ask about a step (Ask about this step in its menu), change something, or re-plan without leaving the page. If you would rather have more room, Continue in the main chat at the top of the panel opens the same conversation on the Home page. The panel's other tabs show your Brief, the Skills the pathway covers, and a history of Changes.
Bring your CV or your LinkedIn profile
Sharing your CV saves you most of the interview. The agent reads it before asking anything, records the skills it shows, and never asks you again for what the CV already says. Those skills appear on your brief under You already bring · from your CV, and the agent leaves them out of the plan so your pathway builds on what you have rather than teaching it again.
Attach a file to a message
Use the + button next to the chat box, drag the file onto the chat, or paste the text in (a long paste becomes a "Pasted text" attachment). You can attach PDF, Word (.docx), CSV, Markdown and plain text files, up to 10 MB each and up to three per message, on the Home page and in the chat panel of a pathway.
The file uploads and is read straight away: the chip shows Uploading, then Reading…, then its details (for example "PDF · 2 pages · 52 KB"). Send is held until every file is ready, and if a file cannot be read you are told before you send. Then write your message, or just pick Plan my route to a new role, and send.
If your CV's latest role has an end date, or the CV looks more than a year old, the agent's first question is whether you are still in that role. If a skill on the card is wrong, tap it to say so, and if you share a newer CV later, its skills replace the earlier ones.
Bring your LinkedIn profile as a PDF
You do not need a CV to hand. LinkedIn can save your profile as a PDF, and the agent reads it the same way. There is no connection between Learnerbly and LinkedIn: nothing is synced, and you choose what to share and when.
On LinkedIn, open your own profile (click Me, then View profile).
Under your name and headline, click More (the ⋯ button next to Enhance profile).
Choose Save to PDF. A file called Profile.pdf downloads.
In Learnerbly, press + in the chat, pick Profile.pdf, wait for the chip to read "PDF · 2 pages" (or however long yours is), and send it with Plan my route to a new role or a message of your own, such as "Here is my LinkedIn profile. What could it lead to?"
The PDF carries your headline, your About summary if you have one, your experience (titles, companies, dates and descriptions), education, certifications and languages, but only the handful of skills LinkedIn shows as Top skills, not your full skills list. The agent fills the gap from your experience, and you can add anything it missed in a sentence, so it is worth a quick look at the You already bring row on your brief.
If you would rather the agent saw your full skills list, use LinkedIn's data export instead. Click Me, then Settings & Privacy, Data privacy and Download your data, tick Profile, Skills and Positions, and request the archive. It arrives by email within a few minutes as a set of CSV files. Attach Skills.csv and Positions.csv to the chat, in one message or across a couple, and the agent reads them together as one CV.
What happens to your file
The original file is kept for 30 days and then deleted. The text the agent read from it stays in that conversation so you can refer back to it, and the skills it found are kept on your Learnerbly profile so later pathways start from them. If you would like any of this removed sooner, ask us through the chat and we will do it for you.
What the agent can and cannot do
To personalise your pathway, the agent reads from your Learnerbly profile: your name, job title and job family, the formats you chose at sign-up, your learning interests, the resources you have already requested, your remaining budget, and, if you have shared one, the skills from your CV. Where your organisation hides budget amounts from learners, the agent never mentions money.
It builds pathways only from your organisation's Learnerbly catalogue. It never invents resources, prices or suppliers, and if the catalogue cannot cover a skill it says so and fills the gap with exercises.
It interviews you, builds a pathway, changes its steps and re-plans it, always with your confirmation. It never changes your profile, your budget or your organisation's rules.
It cannot promise a job or a role. A pathway is a plan for learning, and it is honest about what fits in the time you have.
It reads a CV or other document you attach in that conversation, but it does not connect to LinkedIn or any other account, and it does not share your conversation with your manager or colleagues.
The full list, including what it can do when finding and requesting learning, is in Using the Learnerbly agent: find and request learning.
Troubleshooting
The agent replies in another language
The agent answers in the language you write in, and if you attach a CV written in another language it may follow the CV. Just ask it to carry on in English (or any language you prefer) and it will.
A file will not attach
"Only PDF, Word, Markdown, text and CSV files for now": save the file in one of those formats, or paste its text into the chat.
"Too large · the limit is 10 MB": images are usually what makes a CV heavy. Export it again without them, or as text.
"This looks like a scan" or "No text we can read": the PDF is a picture of a document, with no text inside it. Try the Word version, or paste the text in.
"Couldn't upload": press Retry on the chip. If it keeps failing, check your connection and try again in a moment.
The pathway is taking a long time
Building can take up to two minutes. You do not have to wait on the page: your pathway will be in Your pathways when it is ready. If the agent tells you it could not build a plan this time, your current plan is untouched; try again or tell the agent what you would like to change.
"A re-plan is already running" or "Re-planning isn't available right now"
Only one re-plan runs at a time. Wait for it to finish, or cancel it from the notice above the steps, before asking for another. If re-planning is unavailable, your plan is exactly as it was; try again in a moment.
"That step changed before your tap landed"
The plan was changed in the meantime, for example by the agent in the chat. Nothing was recorded. The plan shown on the page is the latest, so decide there.
I do not see the pathway prompts
Learning pathways are not switched on for your organisation yet. See Not seeing learning pathways? above.
Tell us how it did: the 👍 and 👎 under every reply go straight to the team, and Feedback in the footer of the web app is always open.