Cola Skill

Click Skills in the sidebar to open the skill center. It has three tabs: Installed manages skills on this machine, Discover opens colaos.ai/skills — the skill marketplace, used right inside the app — and Connections manages channel connections. The skill center opens on Installed.

What skills exist and what each one does lives on the site; this page covers only Cola's side: installing, and managing what's installed.

Installing skills

Switch to Discover and open an entry on the site to install it. An installed skill takes effect from the next turn on — a task already running can't use it. If you spot something you want to use right away, you can also invoke it straight from its entry; Cola takes you back to the composer with the invocation prepared.

Entries come in two kinds with different install behavior:

Collections deserve attention:

• When you ask Cola to pick for you, it weighs the members' descriptions against your memory and recent work, and installs a small, genuinely useful set; if you want everything, say "install all of them". A single selection installs at most 12 skills.
• The result lists exactly which skills were installed. Installing 3 members doesn't mean the collection is done — the site distinguishes "installed" from "partially installed".

When an install fails

Failures show the real error; a failed install is never presented as a success. The common ones:

When installing several at once, the ones that succeed are installed normally and the failures are listed separately — partial success is never reported as full success.

Don't work around a failed install by copying skill files into the skills directory by hand: that bypasses the source record, so later you won't know where it came from and it can't be updated properly.

Managing installed skills

Switch to the Installed tab. The list splits in two:

• Built-in skills — the ones shipped with Cola, grouped by what they are for: Documents & work, Research & analysis, Content creation, Personal tasks, System & extensions.
• Added by me — the ones you installed yourself. Site installs are grouped by the collection they came from, anything outside a collection goes under Standalone skills, and MCP external apps from the site sit here too.

The header carries a search box and a filter that narrows the list to Built-in skills or Added by me. A group with too many entries collapses after a few rows: Expand shows the rest, Collapse folds it back, and Expand groups at the bottom opens the remaining groups under Added by me.

Each skill shows a name, a description, a toggle, and a more menu. The menu can Enable or Disable that one skill, and Uninstall it when you installed it yourself.

Group headings carry the same menu for the whole group: Enable all, Disable all, and Uninstall for the removable members. Uninstalling asks for confirmation and tells you how many items go; those skills are gone until you install them again.

What turning a skill off means: Cola stops reaching for it on its own, but it stays in the / menu, so you can still invoke it by hand. Turning it off is reversible at any time. When you have upwards of a hundred skills enabled, Cola offers to trim the list — or just say "help me trim my enabled skills".

Where skill files live:

Site installs record their source, slug, version, and collection. When two skills share a name only one takes effect, resolved top-down in the table above — a skill you installed wins over a shipped skill of the same name.

Skills shipped with Cola

Beyond the skill site, Cola ships with a set of ready-to-use skills. They sit under Built-in skills on the Installed tab as soon as the app is installed, enabled by default, and need no installation of their own:

Invoking them works like any other skill: describe what you need and let Cola choose, or type / followed by the skill name. You can also turn one off individually on the Installed tab — Cola then stops reaching for it while it stays available in the / menu.

Some of them run Python scripts to check data or do calculations. Without a working Python on the machine those steps report an error in the conversation, and the rest continues.

They provide method and process, not professional advice: conclusions about contracts, health, investments, and financial planning are yours to verify, with a licensed professional where it matters.

Built-in capabilities

The top of the Installed tab shows a set of built-in capabilities — creation, search, and automation tools included with Cola that require no installation.

Email and calendar capabilities require connecting the corresponding service first; once connected they are ready to use.

Each capability can be invoked with its / command or by describing what you need in the conversation — Cola picks the right capability on its own. Credit cost for media generation capabilities is shown on each capability card; refer to the in-app display for current pricing.

Built-in capability generation calls are billed separately by actual usage, independent of ordinary model calls (see the media generation billing section in Account, Usage, and Models).

App builder counts your apps that have not been deleted: creating an app is free when you have fewer than 5. Once you have 5 or more, each new app costs a fixed amount of credits and requires an active paid membership — the trial that comes with signing up does not count. Auto credits can pay for it. Deleted apps no longer count; updating an existing app uses no new slot and costs nothing extra. Refer to the in-app display for the exact cost.

External Apps

Under Added by me on the Installed tab, MCP external apps installed from the skill site appear in the External Apps group, each with a toggle and an uninstall entry in its more menu.

What turning an external app off means: Cola cannot see or use the app at all — unlike skill toggles, which only remove it from automatic selection while keeping / invocation available, an external app toggle shuts it off entirely.

Permissions and safety boundaries

• A skill carries no permissions of its own. Its steps are executed by Cola, so what it may read, whether it may use the network, and which actions need confirmation are all still governed by Tasks and permissions.
• Skill content is text written by someone else, often from a third-party repository. Read the name, description, and source before installing — especially skills that want credentials, file uploads, or outbound messages.
• If a skill behaves badly, turn it off on the Installed tab.

Related

• Tasks and permissions — the real permission boundary while a skill runs
• Troubleshooting — what to include when reporting a problem

---

Platforms: macOS and Windows desktop. Status: stable.