Skills, Specialists, plugins and hooks

Specialists (expertise, 28 bundled) and Skills (reusable methods, 44 bundled) are listed to the agent one line each and loaded only when the work matches. Browse them in Settings → Specialists and Settings → Skills, or add one to a message from the composer’s + menu. Third-party Skills and Specialists are HTML capability folders copied into <user-configuration>/extensions or <project>/.synoec/extensions (format). Loading a Skill grants no tools.

Plugins contribute rules, context presets, commands and hooks. Settings → Plugins has one row of tabs: Plugins, Commands, Hooks, Rules and Context presets. Installed packages under Plugins installs, updates and removes packages; Command model hints sits under Commands. Hooks never run on install: open one under Hooks, review its command, then choose Activate hook (or synoec hooks activate). Updating a package revokes earlier hook approvals.

synoec plugins install <directory>
synoec hooks list
synoec hooks activate <hook>
synoec rules list
synoec plugin-commands list
synoec models aliases bind opus --connection <name> --model <model>

Model aliases let a command’s model hint (such as opus) resolve to a model in the current Profile; they do not change the Profile’s default chat model. See the native plugin runtime and the · capability library.

Marketplace, Plugs and Racks

A Plug is something installed that chats can use: GitHub, GitLab or an installed plugin package. The sidebar’s Marketplace page (formerly Plugboards, ) shows one card per installed plug with its sign-in or setup and a Global switch. A global plug is “On in every chat”; otherwise it reaches only the projects whose Rack holds it, and a plug on no project is “On in no project”. A project thread’s rail has a Plugin Rack card: Add Plug puts an installed plug on that project, and a plug’s own button takes it off. Quick Chats have no Rack; their global plugs show in the composer. The Rack does not control a repository’s .synoec/extensions and never activates hooks.