Cowork plugin audit

Cowork Plugin Audit

This skill audits the active plugins in your Claude Cowork setup and produces a keep/disable/disable-until-needed recommendation table. It compares each installed plugin against your described workflow, flags idle or redundant plugins, and provides a qualitative estimate of potential token savings.

Input:

• Your role and workflow description (2–5 sentences)
• List of installed plugins (plain text or markdown list)
• Optional: project context file (.md)

Output:

• Audit table: plugin → category → recommendation → rationale
• Summary: keep/disable counts + qualitative token-savings estimate
• Optional: ready-made Project Instructions block listing disabled plugins

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Language Detection

Detect the user's language from their message:

• If Russian (or contains Cyrillic): respond in Russian
• If English (or other Latin-script language): respond in English
• If ambiguous: respond in the language of the trigger phrase used

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Instructions

Step 1: Collect Workflow Context

1. Check if a project context file was provided or is readable from the working directory

   • If found: extract role, workflow description, and primary tasks from it
   • If not found: proceed to Step 1.2

2. Check if the user provided a workflow description in their message

   • If yes: extract role and 2–3 primary tasks; proceed to Step 2
   • If no: ask one clarifying question: "Please describe 2–3 main tasks you do in Cowork" — wait for the answer before continuing

3. Confirm understanding of workflow in a 1–2 sentence paraphrase (shown inline before the audit table)

Step 2: Collect Plugin List

1. Check if the user provided a list of installed plugins in their message

   • If yes: parse the list and proceed to Step 3
   • If no: ask the user to paste the list from Cowork Settings → Plugins

2. If the user does not know plugin names, offer the standard reference list of known Cowork plugins:

   • engineering, sales, data, operations, productivity, product-management, finance, skill-planner, skill-builder
   • Ask the user to confirm which ones are installed

Negative Case — Empty list: If no plugin list is received after prompting, stop and respond: "Plugin list required. Please paste your installed plugins from Cowork Settings → Plugins."

Step 3: Classify Each Plugin

For each plugin in the list, assign one of three categories based on the described workflow:

• core — used regularly (matches primary tasks described by the user)
• contextual — used for specific project types or occasional tasks (not the current main workflow)
• idle — not referenced by any task in the described workflow

Classification logic:

• Map plugin domain to the tasks the user mentioned
  • e.g., sales → core if user manages deals; idle if user is a solo developer
  • e.g., engineering → core for developers; contextual for PMs who sometimes review code; idle for finance team
• When uncertain: prefer contextual over idle

Step 4: Evaluate and Recommend

For each plugin classified as contextual or idle, generate a recommendation:

Plugin state	Recommendation
core	keep
contextual, high relevance	keep
contextual, low relevance for current project	disable-until-needed
idle	disable

Rationale rule: each rationale must name a specific reason (e.g., "No sales tasks in described workflow" — not just "unused").

Edge Case — Only one plugin installed: Output a brief audit note: "Minimum configuration detected — no plugins recommended for removal."

Edge Case — User's role changes by project: Mark conflicting plugins explicitly as contextual (other projects) and set recommendation to disable-until-needed.

Negative Case — Contradiction: If the user's workflow clearly requires a plugin they want to disable, flag the conflict: "Your workflow mentions [task] which uses [plugin] — recommend keeping. Please confirm if you still want to disable."

Step 5: Format and Output

1. Write the Workflow Context summary (1–2 sentences)
2. Render the Audit Table (all plugins)
3. Render the Summary block (counts + token-savings estimate)
4. If any disable recommendations exist: render the optional Project Instructions block

Token savings estimate logic:

• 0 plugins to disable → no savings estimate needed
• 1–2 plugins disabled → "low" impact
• 3–5 plugins disabled → "moderate" impact
• 6+ plugins disabled → "significant" impact

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Output Format

## Plugin Audit — [date]

### Workflow Context
[1–2 sentences: role and primary tasks as understood]

### Audit Table

| Plugin | Category | Recommendation | Rationale |
|--------|----------|----------------|-----------|
| engineering | contextual | disable-until-needed | Used only during code review tasks; not part of daily workflow |
| sales | idle | disable | No sales-related tasks in described workflow |
| data | core | keep | Regular data analysis is a primary task |
| product-management | core | keep | Sprint planning and spec writing are primary tasks |
| ...  | ...      | ...            | ... |

### Summary
- **Keep:** N plugins
- **Disable:** N plugins
- **Disable-until-needed:** N plugins
- **Estimated token impact:** [low / moderate / significant] reduction

### Optional: Project Instructions Block
Add the following to your Project Instructions to prevent disabled plugins from being activated:

> Disabled plugins for this project: [plugin-1], [plugin-2]. Do not activate skills from these plugins unless I explicitly ask.

Field rules:

• Rationale: 1 sentence, specific (not generic)
• Category: exactly one of core / contextual / idle
• Recommendation: exactly one of keep / disable / disable-until-needed
• Token impact: only included when ≥1 plugin is recommended for disable

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Negative Cases

• No plugin list provided after prompting: Stop. Return: "Plugin list required. Paste your installed plugins from Cowork Settings."
• No workflow description provided after prompting: Stop. Return: "Workflow description required. Describe 2–3 main tasks you do in Cowork."
• User requests disabling a plugin required by their workflow: Flag the contradiction explicitly before proceeding. Do not silently override the recommendation.