cowork-plugin-audit
Audit active Cowork plugins and get a keep/disable table. Reduces token usage and cognitive noise. Use when reviewing Cowork setup, adding new plugins, or starting a new project. Triggers: 'audit my plugins', 'cowork plugin audit', 'which plugins to disable', 'аудит плагинов', 'к
What it does
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
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
Instructions
Step 1: Collect Workflow Context
-
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
-
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
-
Confirm understanding of workflow in a 1–2 sentence paraphrase (shown inline before the audit table)
Step 2: Collect Plugin List
-
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
-
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
- e.g.,
- When uncertain: prefer
contextualoveridle
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
- Write the Workflow Context summary (1–2 sentences)
- Render the Audit Table (all plugins)
- Render the Summary block (counts + token-savings estimate)
- If any
disablerecommendations 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
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
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.
Capabilities
Install
Quality
deterministic score 0.45 from registry signals: · indexed on github topic:agent-skills · 7 github stars · SKILL.md body (6,295 chars)