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Prerequisites

Everything most users need before installing.

To use the plugin

  • A Claude Cowork seat. Plugin runs inside Cowork (or Claude Code, the CLI variant).
  • Web access from your machine — search and monitor skills hit Eurostat, ENTSO-E, the Commission, think-tank pages, journal feeds.
  • The GitHub MCP connector enabled in Cowork. Lifeline for contributing back: skill-feedback, skill-idea, and skill-sender all use it to file issues and PRs on your behalf. Without it the skills print a paste-ready block instead — workable, but the loop is slower. Worth one Day-1 setup.

A workspace folder

Each researcher works inside a workspace folder following the layout in Folder structure. Skills assume the structure when writing outputs (briefs into 04_Drafts/, data into 03_Analysis/data/, contacts into 03_Contacts/, and so on). Set it up once on your machine or shared drive.

For partner admins customising the overlay

Only relevant when a partner admin actively customises identity (adding <your-slug>/org-identity.md, logos, workspaces.md). Regular members never need this.

  • Python 3 + PyYAML (pip3 install pyyaml) on the admin's machine. macOS and Linux usually have Python; Windows: install from python.org.
  • After editing overlay files, run once from your local clone of the repo: 
    python3 plugins/empn-core/shared/scripts/setup_org.py
    Don't have a local clone? Ping the EMPN maintainer after your overlay PR merges — they regenerate it for you.

Skill families with extra requirements

A few skill families need external accounts beyond Cowork. Most users never touch them. Ping the EMPN maintainer when you're ready to enable any of these and we'll write up the specifics:

  • tracker-* — Cloudflare Pages + a DNS zone on your domain.
  • triage-email Outlook side — Microsoft 365 / Outlook MCP connector.
  • Contacts pipeline (contacts-*, contacts-profile) — HubSpot account; production-grade and not Day-1 partner material.
  • create-cover — Midjourney account with a saved profile code.
  • Publication-grade chart and deck export (create-chart, produce-deck-html, create-carousel, create-visual-html — PNG/PDF output only; HTML works without) — Playwright + Chromium installed locally.