Skills change what LacPointer feels like to use
Out of the box, LacPointer handles your connected apps — Notion, Google Calendar, Slack, GitHub. That's already useful. But skills are where the bar starts feeling less like a search box and more like something that actually knows what you care about on a given day.
A skill is a small installable tool from the marketplace. One tap to install. If it needs an API key, you enter it once and it's encrypted. After that, you just talk normally and LacPointer calls the skill automatically when your question fits. No command syntax, no remembering to invoke anything.
I've had a dozen of them installed for a while now. Here's the honest breakdown of which ones I actually keep and why.
Weather — still the most used one
I know it sounds boring. But I open LacPointer with Option+Space first thing in the morning anyway, and "what's the weather today" takes maybe two seconds to answer. The skill returns current conditions plus a short forecast. No browser tab, no waiting for a weather app to animate itself awake.
The thing I didn't expect: it works naturally in compound questions. "What's the weather in Lagos today and should I reschedule my outdoor meeting?" It pulls the weather and checks your Calendar integration in one response. That kind of composability is where skills get interesting.
Hacker News Briefing — good for a morning pulse
I used to open HN first thing out of habit. Now I just ask LacPointer to give me the top stories. The skill pulls the current front page and summarizes what's trending. It's not the same as scrolling through yourself — you miss the comment threads — but for a quick "what's blowing up in tech today" check before a standup, it's genuinely faster.
One thing I do: pair this with the Coding persona. Switch to it, ask for the briefing, and the summary stays tighter and more technical. Personas and skills work together without any setup — the persona's system prompt wraps around skill output automatically.
Crypto Tracker — surprisingly practical
If you have any exposure to crypto at all, this one earns its place. Ask for BTC or ETH price, get a current figure with 24h change. Nothing fancy. But again — Option+Space, ask, done. No opening an exchange, no waiting for a dashboard to load.
Where it gets more useful is when you're already mid-conversation. "What's ETH sitting at, and remind me in my Notion to check again on Friday." That chains Crypto Tracker with the Notion integration in one sentence. LacPointer figures out the right tools to call — you just talk.
Currency Converter — underrated for anyone working across borders
Working at lacai, which is based in Nigeria and sells globally, I'm converting currencies more than I'd like. NGN to USD, USD to EUR — the Currency Converter skill handles it directly in conversation. "How much is 50,000 naira in dollars right now?" comes back with a live rate in a couple of seconds.
Before I had this installed I was tabbing out to Google, which works fine but takes longer than it should when you're already mid-task.
Wikipedia — not for essays, for quick context
This one is more of a lookup tool than a research tool. When something comes up in conversation or a Slack message that I want a quick background on — a person, a company, a technical term — the Wikipedia skill fetches a summary without me leaving what I'm doing. It's the right scope for what it is. Don't expect deep research. Expect a solid paragraph that gets you oriented.
GitHub skill — worth setting up if you haven't
I know there's already GitHub in the core integrations, but the GitHub skill adds some useful query patterns on top. Searching repos, checking issue counts, looking up a user's recent activity. It's a bit different from the core "create an issue" style commands — more read-heavy and exploratory. If you spend time on GitHub, it's worth the five seconds to install and drop in your token.
Trivia and Quotes — yes, I have them installed
Not everything has to be productive. The Trivia skill is great when you have a few people around a screen and want a quick icebreaker. The Quotes skill just returns a quote when you need one — I ask for a quote sometimes when I'm stuck on something and want to reset mentally. It sounds silly. It works.
How skills actually get invoked
This is worth understanding because it changes how you talk to LacPointer. You don't call skills by name. You don't type a command. The AI reads each skill's tool descriptions — which are written in plain English — and decides when your question matches a skill's capability. So "what's the dollar rate today" triggers the Currency Converter. "Any big stories on HN?" triggers the Hacker News skill. It's automatic.
The only time this gets slightly fuzzy is when two skills could plausibly handle the same question. In practice I haven't had many collisions, but if you notice a skill not triggering when you expect it to, rephrasing toward its specific domain usually fixes it.
Installing and managing skills
Open LacPointer with Option+Space, go to the Skills section, and browse the marketplace. Each listing shows what the skill does, what permissions it needs, and whether it requires an API key. One tap installs it. If you want to pull a skill's key or uninstall it, it's all in the same panel.
Green-tier skills (single domain, no special permissions) go live immediately after install. Yellow-tier ones — multiple domains or broader access — go through manual review before they appear for everyone. So everything in the marketplace has already been vetted.
What to install first
If you're setting up a fresh LacPointer install and want to know where to start, here's my actual order:
- Weather — no API key needed, works immediately, you'll use it daily
- Currency Converter — same, no key required, immediately useful
- Hacker News Briefing — no key, great morning habit
- Crypto Tracker — no key, quick price checks without tab switching
- GitHub — needs a token, but worth it if you're on GitHub regularly
- Wikipedia — no key, good reference layer for everything else
After those are in, try asking LacPointer something that spans two skills or mixes a skill with a core integration. "What's the weather in New York and what meetings do I have there this week?" That's the point where skills stop feeling like add-ons and start feeling like part of how the tool thinks.
Grab LacPointer at /lacpointer if you haven't yet, and hit the marketplace to see what's available. New skills get added as developers submit them — it's worth checking back every few weeks.