Skills

A skill is a short set of written instructions that the AI follows for one message. Think of it as a playbook: how to build a marquee, how your brand sounds, the checklist you always want run before a launch. Instead of pasting the same instructions into every chat, you mention the skill by name.

There are three kinds:

Kind	Where it comes from	Where you can use it
Built-in skills	Ship with Plyed (sections, effects and recipes)	Every project
Project libraries	Component libraries added to the project	That project, in the desktop app
Your skills	Playbooks you write yourself	Every project, on the desktop and the web

Use a skill in a chat

1. In the chat composer, type $. A list of skills opens above the composer.
2. Keep typing to narrow it down: $ma shows only skills whose name starts with, or contains, ma.
3. Pick one with ↑ / ↓ and Enter (or Tab), or click it. Plyed writes $skill-name into your message and you keep typing.
4. Send the message as usual.

Press Esc to close the list without picking anything. Your text stays as it is, and the list doesn’t open again for that $; type a new $ to bring it back.

The skill applies to that message only. Mention it again in a later message if you want it again. Messages you sent with skills show a small $skill-name tag under them in the chat.

$ works in AI Chat on the desktop (for local chats and cloud chats) and in cloud chats on the web. On the web the list shows the built-in skills and your own skills; project libraries are only offered in the desktop app.

A $ followed by something that isn’t a skill name, like $5 or $HOME, is just text. If the list can’t be loaded, it says Skills unavailable and anything you type after $ is sent as plain text.

Use several skills at once

You can mention up to 8 skills in one message, for example Rebuild the hero with $hero-split in $brand-voice. They’re attached in the order you mention them. Mentioning the same skill twice attaches it once.

If a reply is still running when you send a message with a skill, the message waits its turn and goes out when the reply finishes, rather than being slipped into the reply in progress.

If two skills share a name, the project’s own one is used first, then yours, then the built-in one.

Your own skills

Write a skill once and use it in every project.

In the desktop app: open All projects, click Ask Plyed, then choose Rules & skills. Under Skills, type a name (lowercase letters, numbers and dashes, like brand-voice) and click + skill. Click a skill to edit its instructions, then save.

Each skill is a folder on your Mac in ~/.config/plyed/agent/skills/, with the instructions in SKILL.md. You can also edit that file in any text editor.

On the web: sign in at api.plyed.app and open Account. The Skills section lists your skills and lets you create, edit and delete them.

How sync works

Your skills sync between the desktop app and your account, so a skill you write on your Mac is available to cloud chats on the web, and the other way round. The desktop app syncs when you sign in, after you create, save or delete a skill, when you type $ in a chat (at most once a minute; a skill it brings down appears in the list right away), and whenever you click Sync now (the line next to it shows when it last synced). Only instructions sync: a skill that includes extra files or packages stays on this Mac and is marked Local only. A skill whose instructions are over the size limit is marked Local only too. Deleting a skill on one side removes it on the other. If the same skill was changed in both places since the last sync, the most recent edit wins and the other version is kept, not lost: it’s saved in your account docs (Rules & skills → Docs) as <name>.conflict-<yyyymmdd>.md. If a skill changes on the web while the desktop is sending its own edit, nothing is overwritten: the sync line says the skill changed elsewhere, and the next sync sorts it out. When you save on the web and the skill has changed elsewhere in the meantime, the web asks whether to reload it or overwrite it.

Your skills on the desktop live in one folder per Mac, and that folder belongs to the first Plyed account that syncs it. If someone else signs in to Plyed on the same Mac with a different account, their skills don’t sync and the skills already on this Mac are never sent to their account: Rules & skills says These local skills belong to another Plyed account on this Mac — sync is off. Choose Use them with this account to make the skills on this Mac yours (they’re then uploaded to the account that’s signed in, and your account’s skills come down next to them), or Keep separate to leave sync off. Nothing is deleted either way.

Skills in shared chats

In a cloud chat that several people use, each message uses the skills of the person who sent it. A teammate’s own skills aren’t available to you, and yours aren’t available to them.

Limits

Limit	Value
Skills per message	8
Your own skills per account	100
Instructions per skill (SKILL.md)	64 KiB

Very long skills are shortened when they’re attached to a message: about the first 16,000 characters of each skill, and about 40,000 characters across all the skills on one message. The AI is told when that happens and can read the rest of the skill when it needs it.