47 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
47 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
---
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title: "Connectors, skills, and plugins"
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description: "Use connectors for systems and plugins for the skills that make a system usable"
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---
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OpenWork gives agents a small set of building blocks. The connector reaches the system; the skill is the playbook; the plugin is the bundle; the Library is where you see what you have.
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## Choose the right unit
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| Use | Means | Reach for it when |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| Connector | An MCP service your organization adds standalone, without wrapping it in a plugin. | The agent needs to act in that system after you connect it once. |
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| Connection | Your own signed-in instance of a connector, one per user. | You sign in so the agent acts as you in that system. |
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| Skill | Written instructions the agent loads when a task matches. | One repeatable way of doing work needs a playbook. |
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| Plugin | A bundle — skills, MCP servers, and other components packaged and distributed as one thing. | Several related pieces should travel together. |
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| Library | The list of active elements you have access to, in the desktop app and the Cloud dashboard. | You want to see or manage what is already available to you. |
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MCP is the open standard underneath many connectors, and the [OpenWork MCP Gateway](/cloud/run-in-the-cloud/cloud-mcp) is how all of it reaches your agent — but day to day you can think in terms of connectors, skills, plugins, and your Library.
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## Connect the system first
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Use connectors for the apps themselves. In the desktop app, start in `Settings` > `OpenWork Connect`; for the click-by-click flow, see [Connect your services](/start-here/connect-your-stack/connect-services).
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Everything your agent can use is listed in `Settings` > `Library`, under `Available apps` and `Your apps`. Use `Add Custom App` to connect something we do not list yet.
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## Add skills when the connector is thin
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A connector may reach your ticketing system but still be awkward: an incident may need exact fields, a priority change may need a safe sequence, or one ticket action may behave badly.
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Write skills for those system rules:
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- how to file an incident with the right fields;
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- how to update a customer note without losing context;
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- how to work around an unreliable ticket action.
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These skills describe the system, not one person's style, so everyone who uses that system needs them.
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## Bundle system skills into a plugin
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Everything is a plugin under the hood. When you ask OpenWork to create a skill, OpenWork creates a small plugin containing that one skill, so “skill or plugin?” is not a decision most people need to make.
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The useful plugin case is a thin connector with several system skills. If half a dozen ticketing skills make one system usable, bundle them into one plugin — the ticketing unit — and share that single thing. For distribution options, see [Publish and copy a skill](/start-here/do-work-with-it/publish-and-copy-a-skill).
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## Keep personal skills separate
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Use connectors for systems. Use plugins to bundle the skills that make a system usable. Personal or workflow-specific skills can stay individual unless a team should receive them together.
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