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Quick start

Three steps from a Cowork seat to your first skill firing. If your admin has already connected the plugin at your organisation level, you're at step 3.

1. Confirm the plugin is connected at your organisation

Open Cowork. In any conversation, type:

/tutorial
  • Tutorial greets you? The plugin is installed. Jump to step 3.
  • Nothing happens? Your Cowork admin needs to do the one-time admin setup below.

2. Admin setup (one-time per organisation)

If you're the Cowork admin for an EMPN partner organisation, this is a single connection — every member of your organisation gets the plugin automatically afterwards.

  1. Sign in to Cowork as admin.
  2. Go to Plugins → Sync from GitHub.
  3. Connect EMPN-eu/empn-core.
  4. Save. Every member of your organisation now has the plugin on their next session.

You need GitHub access to the EMPN-eu/empn-core repo. If you can't see it, ask the EMPN maintainer to add you as a collaborator (or to make the repo accessible to your org).

3. Tell the plugin which organisation you belong to

This is per-user, set once.

EMPN members: nothing to do. The plugin defaults to EMPN's identity.

Partner organisation members: edit ~/.claude/settings.json and add your organisation's slug under env:

{ "env": { "EMPN_ORG": "<your-slug>" } }

Pre-prepared slugs: arena-ide, dezernat-zukunft, institut-avant-garde. If your organisation isn't on the list, see Contributing — register a new organisation.

Then run the overlay resolver once. From a terminal inside the Cowork install directory:

python3 plugins/empn-core/shared/scripts/overlay_setup.py

It generates symlinks so the plugin uses your organisation's identity wherever you've customised, and EMPN's defaults everywhere else. Re-run after plugin updates or when you change your overlay files.

4. Fire your first skill

Back in any Cowork conversation:

/tutorial

The tutorial walks you through three real skills (help → an evidence skill → skill-feedback) in about ten minutes. By the end you've fired your first skill and filed your first feedback note — that's the whole loop.

If you're using Claude Code (CLI)

Plugins work in Claude Code too. Two commands, once:

/plugin marketplace add EMPN-eu/empn-core
/plugin install empn-core@empn

Same /tutorial to verify.

After the tutorial

  • Don't know which skill to use? Type help in any conversation. It routes you to the right skill or chain.
  • Want to see all skills? Skills catalogue.
  • Want to see end-to-end workflows? Workflows.
  • Where do files land on disk? Folder structure.
  • Spotted a bug or want a new skill? Run skill-feedback or skill-idea — both file a GitHub issue on your behalf.

Common questions

  • Do I need Git? No. Everything happens in Cowork conversations.
  • Is my data shared? No. The plugin ships instructions (skills) that Claude follows. It doesn't read or transmit your work.
  • Does it work in Claude.ai web or the API? Not yet. Cowork and Claude Code only.
  • How are updates delivered? Every push to main on EMPN-eu/empn-core re-syncs to Cowork within minutes. You don't do anything.