> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.plain.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Skills

> Reusable routines you can invoke in Sidekick with a slash command. Built-in shortcuts and custom ones your team creates.

Skills are reusable, named routines you can run in Sidekick with a single slash command. Plain ships built-in skills for common support workflows, and your team can add custom skills for anything you do repeatedly.

## Built-in skills

Every workspace starts with two skills:

* **/draft-reply**: drafts a concise, human-sounding customer reply for the current thread, following your workspace tone settings.

* **/plain-docs**: answers questions about how Plain itself works, drawing on help.plain.com.

## Custom skills

Custom skills let your team encode recurring workflows so Sidekick can run them on demand. A skill has three parts:

* **Name**: the label shown in the slash-command picker and used to invoke the skill (e.g. `/quota-check`).

* **Description**: tells Sidekick when to suggest the skill automatically, without being asked directly.

* **Instructions**: the full routine Sidekick follows when the skill runs.

Custom skills are workspace-scoped: create one and it becomes available in every Sidekick session, for every user, immediately.

### Creating a skill

Open a Sidekick session and describe the skill you want. Sidekick will build it and save it to the workspace:

> Create a skill called quota-check that looks up how close a customer is to their plan limit and summarizes the result.

The skill is available to invoke as soon as it is created.

### Updating a skill

Ask Sidekick to update a skill by name and describe what should change. Instructions are fully replaced on each update, so be specific about what you want to keep, add, or remove.

## Invoking a skill

Type **/** in the Sidekick composer to open the skill picker. Select from the list or keep typing to filter by name, then press **Enter**. Sidekick runs the skill in the context of your current session: if you are on a thread, thread data is included automatically.

Skills work anywhere Sidekick is available: in a thread, on the Home page, or from a connected Slack channel.