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Skills

Pre-built AI workflows for common SaaS-management tasks. Install with a URL, run with a sentence.

What Skills are​

A ShiftControl Skill is a folder of instructions that your AI assistant loads to handle a specific multi-step task. Each Skill combines:

  • Domain knowledge — what the task is, when to use it, what the right outcome looks like
  • MCP tool orchestration — which ShiftControl tools to call, in what order, with what data
  • Guardrails — when to ask the user before acting, what counts as a successful result

Skills are open source and live at github.com/ShiftControl-io/skills. Each Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md describing the task, plus any supporting files.

How Skills work with the MCP server​

Skills don't replace the MCP server — they're layered on top of it. The MCP server gives your AI the raw tools (list_users, update_subscription, etc.); a Skill gives it the instructions for how to use those tools to accomplish a specific goal.

You can run ShiftControl from your AI without installing any Skill — the MCP server alone is enough for ad-hoc questions like "list every disabled user." Skills become useful when you have a repeatable, multi-step task you want your AI to handle the same way every time.

Installing a Skill​

The exact install steps depend on your AI client. The general shape:

  1. Connect the MCP server first — see Connect your AI tool. Skills assume MCP is already wired up.
  2. Add the Skill to your client. For Claude Code, that's /skill add <url>. For Claude Desktop, you'd drop the Skill folder into your skills directory. For other clients, follow their Skill / agent / extension docs.
  3. Verify by asking the AI to run the Skill by name.

The authoritative per-client install steps live in INSTALL.md in the Skills repo — that's the file that gets updated when AI clients change their installation paths.

Current catalog​

refresh-subscription-info​

Finds recent SaaS invoices in your email and proposes ShiftControl subscription updates (cost, billing cycle, contract length) based on what it sees.

What it does, step by step:

  1. Searches your email for recent invoices from SaaS vendors
  2. Cross-references each vendor with your ShiftControl app catalog via list_apps
  3. For each match, reads the current subscription state via get_subscription
  4. Computes a diff between what your invoice says and what ShiftControl has on record
  5. Shows you the proposed updates and asks for explicit approval
  6. Calls update_subscription (with confirm: true) for each update you approve

Requirements: the shiftcontrol MCP server plus an email-search MCP (Gmail, Microsoft Graph, or your AI client's built-in email integration).

Skill folder: skills/refresh-subscription-info

More Skills coming

The Skills catalog is open and growing. New entries get announced at journey.shiftcontrol.io, and the Skills repo is the live source of truth.

Writing your own Skill​

If you've built a repeatable AI workflow that hits ShiftControl, you can publish it as a Skill — either privately for your team, or as a contribution to the public catalog.

A Skill at minimum is a folder with a SKILL.md file. The SKILL.md has frontmatter (name, description, trigger phrases) and a body that explains the task to the AI: when to use it, what the right MCP tool sequence is, and what guardrails to apply (especially around write tools).

Contributing to the public catalog: open a PR at github.com/ShiftControl-io/skills. The repo README has the contribution checklist.