Skills

A skill is a reusable capability you add to your Plank assistant — a packaged way of doing a particular kind of work. Once a skill is installed and turned on, the assistant can draw on it whenever a task calls for it, without you having to re-explain the steps each time.

Think of skills as the specialised know-how your assistant keeps on hand: a skill for building slide decks, one for cleaning up spreadsheets, one for drafting a particular kind of report. You install the ones your work needs, and the assistant uses them automatically.

Where to manage skills

Skills live in Settings → Skills. The page has two parts:

• Connected Skills — everything currently installed in this workspace, each showing whether it's Enabled or Disabled.
• Skills Library — a browsable catalogue of ready-made skills you can install in one click, plus an option to add a skill from your own source.

Skills are per workspace. A skill you install in one workspace is available to the assistant in that workspace only; switching to a different workspace gives you that workspace's own set of skills.

Who can change skills: Workspace owners, admins, and members can install, enable, disable, and remove skills. Viewers can see the list but not change it.

Installing a skill from the library

This is the simplest path and needs no technical knowledge.

1. Open Settings → Skills and scroll to Skills Library.
2. Browse by category, or type in the search box to find a skill by name or description.
3. On the skill you want, press Install. The button shows progress while it sets up, then the skill joins your Connected Skills list.

Some entries are marked Collection — installing one of those adds a bundle of related skills in a single step.

Newly installed skills are turned on automatically, so the assistant can start using them right away.

Three skills are already there

Every workspace starts with three skills installed and switched on, so you don't have to find them first:

• Deliverable Writing and Deliverable Design — the quality standard described below.
• Image Generation — lets the assistant generate images (deck covers, section dividers, report illustrations) and save them into your workspace as files. Generated images are billed to your plan's AI allowance, at roughly a hundred times the cost of a text reply. If you'd rather not spend on them, turn this one off in Settings → Skills; it stays off, and nothing here will switch it back on. Your workspace's allowance and a per-hour cap apply either way.

Workspaces that existed before this change got the same three, with one exception: any skill you had already installed was left exactly as you had it, including one you had switched off.

Quality skills from Plank

Two entries sit at the top of the library and are written and maintained by Plank. They aren't a new capability — they're a standard for the work the assistant already does:

• Deliverable Writing — the words. Titles that state the finding instead of naming the subject, every number with something to compare it against, one idea per slide or section, and a deliverable that ends with the decision you have to make (or, on a dashboard, the number that counts as bad). It also strips the phrasing that gives a generated document away: an invented figure behind a hedge, an ordinary fact called a turning point, sales adjectives, an unnamed expert, and a closing slide of vague optimism.
• Deliverable Design — the look. One focal point per slide, section or panel; spacing that repeats instead of being tuned each time; charts you can read without matching colours to a key; colour used as meaning rather than decoration.

They apply to slide decks, documents and dashboards alike, and both cover what changes when the deliverable is written in Russian or Kazakh. They're a pair: installing Deliverable Design installs Deliverable Writing with it, because a deliverable that looks considered and says nothing is still a bad deliverable. Writing installs on its own if that's all you want. If your team already works another way (a director who wants blunt one-line summaries and no closing recommendation), disable the one you disagree with for that workspace and keep the other. Like every skill, they're per workspace.

Reading what a skill does

To see a skill's full description before relying on it, open the ⋯ menu on any connected skill and choose View SKILL.md. A panel opens with the skill's own documentation.

Adding a skill from your own source

If a skill you want isn't in the library, you can add it yourself. In Settings → Skills, press the + button (top of the Skills section) to open the Install Custom Skill form. Choose one of two sources:

• Git — paste a repository link. You can optionally specify a branch or tag, a sub-folder, and a name for the skill.
• ZIP — provide a link to a ZIP file, or upload one from your device. You can optionally specify a sub-folder and a name.

These options are mainly for skills someone has prepared for you. If you're not sure what to put here, the library is the place to start.

Building or editing a skill by asking in chat

You don't have to find a ready-made skill for everything — you can have the assistant build one for you in chat. This is useful when you've done the same task a few times and want to turn it into a repeatable skill of your own.

The way in is the Skill Builder (/skill-builder). For a skill you created yourself, open its ⋯ menu in Settings → Skills and choose Edit in chat — Plank drops you into chat with the Skill Builder ready, where you describe in plain language what the skill should do and the assistant writes and registers it for you. Skills you build this way appear in your Connected Skills list just like library ones, and you can enable, disable, view, or remove them the same way.

The Edit in chat option appears only for skills you created yourself in this workspace — library and imported skills are managed through their source instead (see Updating a skill below).

Turning skills on and off

Every connected skill can be switched on or off without removing it. Open the skill's ⋯ menu and choose Disable (or Enable). A disabled skill stays installed but the assistant won't use it until you turn it back on. This is handy when you want a skill available later but not in play right now.

Updating a skill

For skills installed from the library or from a Git/ZIP link, the ⋯ menu includes Update, which re-fetches the latest version from its source. (Skills you built in chat, or installed from an uploaded ZIP file, don't have a remote source to update from, so this option won't appear for them.)

Removing a skill

To remove a skill entirely, open its ⋯ menu and choose Delete. Plank asks you to confirm. Deleting takes the skill out of the workspace completely — if you want to keep it but pause it, use Disable instead.