---
title: "Connectors, skills, and plugins"
description: "Use connectors for systems and plugins for the skills that make a system usable"
---

OpenWork gives agents three building blocks. The connector reaches the system; the skill is the playbook; the plugin is the bundle.

## Choose the right unit

| Use | Means | Reach for it when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Connector | How OpenWork reaches mail, calendar, CRM, or your ticketing system. | The agent needs to act in that system after you connect it once. |
| Skill | Written instructions the agent loads when a task matches. | One repeatable way of doing work needs a playbook. |
| Plugin | A bundle OpenWork can install or distribute as one thing. | Several related skills should travel together. |

MCP is the open standard underneath many connectors, but day to day you can think in terms of apps, connectors, skills, and plugins.

## Connect the system first

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).

Everything your agent can use is listed in `Settings` > `Extensions`, under `Available apps` and `Your apps`. Use `Add Custom App` to connect something we do not list yet.

## Add skills when the connector is thin

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.

Write skills for those system rules:

- how to file an incident with the right fields;
- how to update a customer note without losing context;
- how to work around an unreliable ticket action.

These skills describe the system, not one person's style, so everyone who uses that system needs them.

## Bundle system skills into a plugin

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.

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).

## Keep personal skills separate

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.
