Plugins and skills

Choose your plugins

Select Plugins in the sidebar to open the store. The store contains tools included with Almanac, connectors for other services, and skills that define how certain tasks should be completed.

When you enable a plugin, Almanac can use its tools and instructions. When you turn it off, Almanac can't select or use it.

Keep your plugins focused

Almanac can choose the appropriate tool more reliably from a focused set. Enable the plugins relevant to your work and leave the others off.

Use a specific plugin

Type @ in the composer, then choose a plugin to direct your request to it.

Use built-in tools

Almanac includes the following tools. Turn them on from the plugin store before using them.

Literature Search

Searches published medical research from within a conversation. Ask a focused clinical question to find relevant articles about treatment, diagnosis, prognosis, guidelines, or recent findings. Results include article details, abstracts, links, and citations you can use to open the original sources.

Clinical Trials

Searches registered studies by condition, treatment, recruitment status, or location. It can retrieve the study purpose, phase, sponsor, eligibility criteria, and recruiting sites. When given patient information, it can compare that information with the listed criteria and identify what still needs to be confirmed.

ClinicalTrials.gov is a public resource of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine. Almanac isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the NIH or any U.S. Government agency.

Medical Calculators

Finds and runs clinical risk scores, severity measures, decision rules, and bedside formulas. Describe the case and Almanac selects a relevant calculator, fills in the values you provided, and leaves missing values for you to complete. The interactive calculator updates as you change its inputs and includes an interpretation and applicable caveats.

LiverTox

Looks up medications, herbal products, and supplements in the NIH and NIDDK reference on drug-induced liver injury. Results can include the likelihood grade, injury pattern, typical time to onset, proposed mechanism, management information, and links to the original monographs.

LiverTox is a public resource of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and NIDDK. Almanac isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the NIH, NIDDK, NLM, or any U.S. Government agency. Likelihood grades describe the strength of a documented association. Patient-specific assessment remains a matter of clinical judgment.

Web Search

Finds current information on public websites, including guidelines, safety communications, recalls, shortages, and news. It can also open a public page and summarize the information relevant to your question. Web Search works with public HTML and text pages and has read-only access.

To choose which websites Web Search should prefer or exclude, go to Settings > Web Search. Website rules apply to the listed domain and its subdomains.

Connect other services

Connectors give Almanac access to services you already use. You authorize each connector separately and can disconnect it from the same place. Available connectors depend on your organization.

Connect your EHR

The connection to your EHR is read-only, allowing Almanac to bring a patient's chart context into a conversation without writing back to the record.

EHR setup is completed for your organization. To review the connection, go to Settings > Electronic Health Record. See Patients.

Connect mail and calendar

Connect Gmail or Outlook to draft messages. Connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar to prepare scheduling details. Almanac prepares the content for you to review and can't send an email on its own.

Connect Zoom

Connect Zoom to search your meetings in plain language, pull up summaries, recordings, transcripts, and notes, and schedule, update, or cancel meetings when you ask. See Use Zoom with Almanac.

Connect an MCP server

Almanac supports the Model Context Protocol, allowing your institution to add its own tools and data sources as a connector. MCP servers can provide their own authorization.

To add an institutional MCP server, contact your administrator or email support@almanac.chat.

Use Zoom with Almanac

The Zoom plugin connects Almanac to your Zoom account. Almanac can find your meetings and what came out of them, and can manage meetings on your behalf when you ask it to.

Before you start

You need:

• An Almanac account.
• A Zoom account. Almanac sees only what your Zoom account can see.
• Zoom made available to you by your workspace. If an administrator has restricted plugins, Zoom may not appear in your store.

Some content depends on your Zoom plan and settings. Cloud recordings and transcripts appear only for meetings recorded to the cloud, and meeting summaries appear only when Zoom's AI summaries are turned on for your account.

Add Zoom

1. 1

   Open the Zoom plugin

   Select Plugins in the sidebar, then choose Zoom. It is listed under Meetings & Messaging.

2. 2

   Select Get

   Almanac sends you to Zoom to sign in. Sign in with the Zoom account you want to connect.

3. 3

   Review and allow access

   Zoom lists the permissions Almanac is requesting. Select Allow to authorize the connection.

4. 4

   Return to Almanac

   Zoom sends you back to the Zoom plugin page, where Almanac confirms you are Connected and the button reads Enabled.

Almanac requests access to:

• Your Zoom profile (name and email), to show which account is connected.
• Meeting search and meeting details.
• Cloud recordings and their content, including transcripts.
• Meeting summaries and your notes.
• Zoom's AI search across your meetings.
• Creating, updating, and deleting meetings.

Use Zoom

Ask in ordinary language. Almanac uses Zoom when your request is about your meetings, or you can type @ in the composer and choose Zoom to direct a request to it.

You can:

• Find meetings by topic, participant, or date, and locate the moment something was discussed.
• Review what happened using summaries, transcripts, recordings, playback links, and next steps.
• Prepare an agenda or follow-up from a previous meeting's transcript, summary, and shared materials.
• Manage meetings by scheduling, rescheduling, or canceling them.

Almanac asks for your approval before it creates, changes, or cancels a meeting. You see what it intends to do and can select Allow or Cancel. If you set approvals to Auto-Approve All, or choose Always allow for these actions, Almanac makes the change without asking. See Permissions.

Content Almanac retrieves from Zoom becomes part of the conversation it was retrieved in, and is kept and deleted with that conversation. See Privacy and data.

To stop Almanac from using Zoom without disconnecting your account, go to Settings > Configuration > Capabilities and turn Zoom off. Turn it back on at any time without signing in again.

Troubleshoot Zoom

If a problem persists, email support@almanac.chat with what you asked and roughly when.

Remove Zoom

To disconnect Zoom from Almanac:

1. 1

   Go to the Zoom plugin

   Select Plugins in the sidebar, then choose Zoom.

2. 2

   Select Enabled

   Selecting Enabled disconnects Zoom and revokes Almanac's access to your Zoom account. The button changes back to Get.

You can also remove Almanac from Zoom. Sign in to the Zoom App Marketplace, select Manage > Added Apps, find Almanac, and select Remove. This revokes Almanac's access and disconnects Zoom in Almanac.

What happens when you remove Zoom:

• Almanac's access to your Zoom account is revoked and its stored Zoom credentials are deleted immediately. Almanac can no longer read or change anything in your Zoom account.
• Content already retrieved stays in the conversations where it was used until you delete those conversations.
• Meetings Almanac scheduled for you stay in Zoom. Removing the plugin doesn't cancel them.

To use Zoom again later, add it the same way you did the first time.

Use third-party services

Some plugins connect Almanac to clinical references and services from other providers, such as Sanford Guide for antimicrobial therapy and OM1 PhenOM for risk prediction. Each plugin page describes what the service includes and how access is licensed.

Use your organization's subscription

If your organization already subscribes to a service, an administrator can connect it for everyone covered by the license. You don't need to sign in with a separate account.

Use your own subscription

If access is licensed individually, connect the plugin and sign in with your account for that service. Your credentials remain with the provider, which tells Almanac what your account can access.

You can disconnect the service at any time from its page in the plugin store. Access ends immediately.

Pay for what you use

Some services offer usage-based access without a separate subscription. Charges are based on your use and appear in your Almanac account. See Usage and billing.

Use skills

A skill is a set of instructions Almanac uses for a particular kind of work. A plugin adds a capability. A skill defines a procedure, such as how your department writes a consult note, which sections belong in a journal club summary, or how to complete your discharge template.

Skills appear in the plugin store. Almanac can load an enabled skill when it matches your request. To choose one yourself, type / in the composer, then select the skill by name.

Use built-in skills

Almanac includes skills for creating common file types:

• Documents creates and edits Word files, including reports, memos, letters, contracts, and templates. It supports headings, tables, images, tables of contents, headers and footers, tracked changes, and comments.
• Presentations creates and edits PowerPoint decks. It can work from an existing deck or template, update the visual style, and tighten the content.
• Spreadsheets creates and edits Excel workbooks with formulas, multiple sheets, and formatting.

You don't need to name the skill in your prompt. When you ask Almanac to create a presentation, for example, it can load the Presentations skill automatically.

Create a skill

If you regularly give Almanac the same instructions, consider saving them as a skill.

A skill is a Markdown document with a short introductory section and a body of instructions. The description helps Almanac decide when the skill applies. The body contains the procedure Almanac follows after loading it.

In addition to a name and description, a skill can specify:

• When to use it: The situations that should trigger the skill.
• Allowed tools: The tools the skill may use. This can keep a formatting skill from searching the web, for example.
• Model and reasoning effort: The model and effort to use, such as Summit at high effort or Stat at low effort.
• Context: Whether the skill runs inline in the current conversation or in a separate, forked context.
• Arguments: Named inputs that can be passed when invoking the skill.

Write specific instructions

A useful skill defines a repeatable result.

Too broad:

Help with clinical documentation.

More specific:

Write a discharge summary in our department's format. Use these sections in order: reason for admission, hospital course by problem, discharge medications with changes marked, follow-up, and pending results. Never invent a pending result. If a section has no content, write "None" instead of removing the heading.

Specific instructions help Almanac produce a consistent result each time.

Manage your skills

You can edit, turn off, or turn on skills you created. When a skill is off, Almanac can't select or load it.

Control skill permissions

A skill uses the permissions already set for Almanac. Its allowed-tools list can further limit what the skill may use, but it can't grant additional access. See Permissions.