Skills & plugins — Extend stagewise agents - Docs - stagewise: The Agentic IDE for Open-Source Models

Skills and plugins extend stagewise beyond its default capabilities. Skills teach the agent about your project. Plugins add new tools, integrations, and interactive features.

Skills

A skill is a set of instructions the agent follows when working on specific tasks. You create skills as SKILL.md files in your workspace.

How skills resolve

When the agent picks up a task, it checks whether any skills match the trigger, then resolves them in priority order: Higher-priority versions shadow lower ones when the same skill exists in multiple locations.

What skills do

Skills can teach the agent:

Project conventions — Naming patterns, file structure, preferred libraries
Domain knowledge — How your framework or system works
Workflows — Multi-step processes the agent should follow
Constraints — Rules the agent must respect

Skill locations and priority

Location	Priority	Scope
`.stagewise/skills/`	Highest	stagewise-only
`.agents/skills/`	Lower	Shared across AI tools

Skill structure

.stagewise/skills/my-skill/
├── SKILL.md          # Instructions (required)
├── references/       # Files the agent can read
└── assets/           # Supporting files

A SKILL.md needs a clear trigger description:

---
name: "tailwind-patterns"
description: "Use when creating or modifying React components with Tailwind CSS."
---

# Instructions

Always use design tokens from the theme, never hardcoded colors...

Slash commands

Invoke skills explicitly with slash commands. Type / in the chat to see available commands from your skills and plugins.

Plugins

Plugins are pre-built extensions that can include skills, credential storage, and interactive mini-apps.

Built-in plugins

Plugin	What it provides
Figma	Access Figma designs, real-time selection monitoring
GitHub	Repository access, issues, pull requests, actions
Supabase	Database queries, edge functions, migrations
PostHog	Analytics queries, feature flags, experiments
Vercel	Deployments, logs, environment variables
Remotion	Video creation and editing in React

Plugin credentials

Some plugins need API keys or tokens. Credentials are encrypted on your machine and never exposed in plaintext. Configure them in Settings → Agent → Plugins.

Plugin apps

Plugins can ship interactive mini-apps that render inside the chat sidebar. The agent opens these apps and exchanges data with them — for example, a Figma plugin showing a design preview panel.

Skills vs plugins

	Skills	Plugins
Created by	You, for your project	stagewise
Scope	Per workspace	Global (all workspaces)
Includes	Instructions only	Skills, credentials, apps
Stored in	Your workspace	stagewise installation

What’s next

Agent context

Understand how skills fit into the agent’s context system.

Skills & context reference

Configure skills and context files per workspace.

Plugins reference

Manage installed plugins and configure credentials.

​Skills

​How skills resolve

​What skills do

​Skill locations and priority

​Skill structure

​Slash commands

​Plugins

​Built-in plugins

​Plugin credentials

​Plugin apps

​Skills vs plugins

​What’s next