Productivity

Skill 172 of 200

Update

Sync tasks and refresh memory from your current activity.

2 minutes · 443 words · 15 sections

Install

$ npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill update

$ npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins

» /plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Update Command

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md (opens in a new tab).

Keep your task list and memory current. Two modes:

Default: Sync tasks from external tools, triage stale items, check memory for gaps
--comprehensive: Deep scan chat, email, calendar, docs — flag missed todos and suggest new memories

Usage

/productivity:update
/productivity:update --comprehensive

Default Mode

1. Load Current State

Read TASKS.md and memory/ directory. If they don’t exist, suggest /productivity:start first.

2. Sync Tasks from External Sources

Check for available task sources:

Project tracker (e.g. Asana, Linear, Jira) (if MCP available)
GitHub Issues (if in a repo): gh issue list --assignee=@me

If no sources are available, skip to Step 3.

Fetch tasks assigned to the user (open/in-progress). Compare against TASKS.md:

External task	TASKS.md match?	Action
Found, not in TASKS.md	No match	Offer to add
Found, already in TASKS.md	Match by title (fuzzy)	Skip
In TASKS.md, not in external	No match	Flag as potentially stale
Completed externally	In Active section	Offer to mark done

Present diff and let user decide what to add/complete.

3. Triage Stale Items

Review Active tasks in TASKS.md and flag:

Tasks with due dates in the past
Tasks in Active for 30+ days
Tasks with no context (no person, no project)

Present each for triage: Mark done? Reschedule? Move to Someday?

4. Decode Tasks for Memory Gaps

For each task, attempt to decode all entities (people, projects, acronyms, tools, links):

Task: "Send PSR to Todd re: Phoenix blockers"

Decode:
- PSR → ✓ Pipeline Status Report (in glossary)
- Todd → ✓ Todd Martinez (in people/)
- Phoenix → ? Not in memory

Track what’s fully decoded vs. what has gaps.

5. Fill Gaps

Present unknown terms grouped:

I found terms in your tasks I don't have context for:

1. "Phoenix" (from: "Send PSR to Todd re: Phoenix blockers")
   → What's Phoenix?

2. "Maya" (from: "sync with Maya on API design")
   → Who is Maya?

Add answers to the appropriate memory files (people/, projects/, glossary.md).

6. Capture Enrichment

Tasks often contain richer context than memory. Extract and update:

Links from tasks → add to project/people files
Status changes (“launch done”) → update project status, demote from CLAUDE.md
Relationships (“Todd’s sign-off on Maya’s proposal”) → cross-reference people
Deadlines → add to project files

7. Report

Update complete:
- Tasks: +3 from project tracker (e.g. Asana), 1 completed, 2 triaged
- Memory: 2 gaps filled, 1 project enriched
- All tasks decoded ✓

Comprehensive Mode (`--comprehensive`)

Everything in Default Mode, plus a deep scan of recent activity.

Extra Step: Scan Activity Sources

Gather data from available MCP sources:

Chat: Search recent messages, read active channels
Email: Search sent messages
Documents: List recently touched docs
Calendar: List recent + upcoming events

Extra Step: Suggest New Memories

Surface new entities not in memory:

## New People (not in memory)
| Name | Frequency | Context |
|------|-----------|---------|
| Maya Rodriguez | 12 mentions | design, UI reviews |
| Alex K | 8 mentions | DMs about API |

## New Projects/Topics
| Name | Frequency | Context |
|------|-----------|---------|
| Starlight | 15 mentions | planning docs, product |

## Suggested Cleanup
- **Horizon project** — No mentions in 30 days. Mark completed?

Present grouped by confidence. High-confidence items offered to add directly; low-confidence items asked about.

Notes

Never auto-add tasks or memories without user confirmation
External source links are preserved when available
Fuzzy matching on task titles handles minor wording differences
Safe to run frequently — only updates when there’s new info
--comprehensive always runs interactively

About this skill

Trigger

Sync tasks and refresh memory from your current activity. Use when pulling new assignments from your project tracker into TASKS.md, triaging stale or overdue tasks, filling memory gaps for unknown people or projects, or running a comprehensive scan to catch todos buried in chat and email.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins, branch main, last pushed 23 September 2026.

Licence

Apache-2.0 — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

200 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 27 distinct layouts observed: bio-research/skills/*/SKILL.md, cowork-plugin-management/skills/*/SKILL.md, customer-support/skills/*/SKILL.md, data/skills/*/SKILL.md, design/skills/*/SKILL.md, engineering/skills/*/SKILL.md, enterprise-search/skills/*/SKILL.md, finance/skills/*/SKILL.md, human-resources/skills/*/SKILL.md, legal/skills/*/SKILL.md, marketing/skills/*/SKILL.md, operations/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/apollo/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/brand-voice/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/common-room/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/slack/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/contact-center/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/meeting-sdk/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/meeting-sdk/web/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/video-sdk/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/virtual-agent/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/zoom-mcp/*/SKILL.md, pdf-viewer/skills/*/SKILL.md, product-management/skills/*/SKILL.md, productivity/skills/*/SKILL.md, sales/skills/*/SKILL.md.

Issue colours

Resolved from the awesome-design-md registry — hue 39°, chroma 0.113. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Typefaces

Display: Copernicus is not available to us; set in Newsreader.

We never load a typeface at request time from a third-party origin, so a brand face we do not already self-host is substituted rather than fetched.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Shifted “15 headings” from h1 to h2 so the skill title is the only h1.

Spec compliance

53 editorial notes across 41 of 200 skills. They are printed in the margin of each skill rather than as errors here.

and 31 more.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Anthropic, declaring 120 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Update Command

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md (opens in a new tab).

Keep your task list and memory current. Two modes:

Default: Sync tasks from external tools, triage stale items, check memory for gaps
--comprehensive: Deep scan chat, email, calendar, docs — flag missed todos and suggest new memories

Usage

/productivity:update
/productivity:update --comprehensive

Project tracker (e.g. Asana, Linear, Jira) (if MCP available)
GitHub Issues (if in a repo): gh issue list --assignee=@me

If no sources are available, skip to Step 3.

Fetch tasks assigned to the user (open/in-progress). Compare against TASKS.md:

External task	TASKS.md match?	Action
Found, not in TASKS.md	No match	Offer to add
Found, already in TASKS.md	Match by title (fuzzy)	Skip
In TASKS.md, not in external	No match	Flag as potentially stale
Completed externally	In Active section	Offer to mark done

Present diff and let user decide what to add/complete.

3. Triage Stale Items

Review Active tasks in TASKS.md and flag:

Tasks with due dates in the past
Tasks in Active for 30+ days
Tasks with no context (no person, no project)

Present each for triage: Mark done? Reschedule? Move to Someday?

4. Decode Tasks for Memory Gaps

For each task, attempt to decode all entities (people, projects, acronyms, tools, links):

Task: "Send PSR to Todd re: Phoenix blockers"

Decode:
- PSR → ✓ Pipeline Status Report (in glossary)
- Todd → ✓ Todd Martinez (in people/)
- Phoenix → ? Not in memory

Track what’s fully decoded vs. what has gaps.

5. Fill Gaps

Present unknown terms grouped:

I found terms in your tasks I don't have context for:

1. "Phoenix" (from: "Send PSR to Todd re: Phoenix blockers")
   → What's Phoenix?

2. "Maya" (from: "sync with Maya on API design")
   → Who is Maya?

Add answers to the appropriate memory files (people/, projects/, glossary.md).

6. Capture Enrichment

Tasks often contain richer context than memory. Extract and update:

Links from tasks → add to project/people files
Status changes (“launch done”) → update project status, demote from CLAUDE.md
Relationships (“Todd’s sign-off on Maya’s proposal”) → cross-reference people
Deadlines → add to project files

7. Report

Update complete:
- Tasks: +3 from project tracker (e.g. Asana), 1 completed, 2 triaged
- Memory: 2 gaps filled, 1 project enriched
- All tasks decoded ✓

Comprehensive Mode (`--comprehensive`)

Everything in Default Mode, plus a deep scan of recent activity.

Extra Step: Scan Activity Sources

Gather data from available MCP sources:

Chat: Search recent messages, read active channels
Email: Search sent messages
Documents: List recently touched docs
Calendar: List recent + upcoming events

Extra Step: Flag Missed Todos

Compare activity against TASKS.md. Surface action items that aren’t tracked:

## Possible Missing Tasks

From your activity, these look like todos you haven't captured:

1. From chat (Jan 18):
   "I'll send the updated mockups by Friday"
   → Add to TASKS.md?

2. From meeting "Phoenix Standup" (Jan 17):
   You have a recurring meeting but no Phoenix tasks active
   → Anything needed here?

3. From email (Jan 16):
   "I'll review the API spec this week"
   → Add to TASKS.md?

Let user pick which to add.

Extra Step: Suggest New Memories

Surface new entities not in memory:

## New People (not in memory)
| Name | Frequency | Context |
|------|-----------|---------|
| Maya Rodriguez | 12 mentions | design, UI reviews |
| Alex K | 8 mentions | DMs about API |

## New Projects/Topics
| Name | Frequency | Context |
|------|-----------|---------|
| Starlight | 15 mentions | planning docs, product |

## Suggested Cleanup
- **Horizon project** — No mentions in 30 days. Mark completed?

Present grouped by confidence. High-confidence items offered to add directly; low-confidence items asked about.

Notes

Never auto-add tasks or memories without user confirmation
External source links are preserved when available
Fuzzy matching on task titles handles minor wording differences
Safe to run frequently — only updates when there’s new info
--comprehensive always runs interactively