Playbooks (and why we recommend skills)

We recommend skills for new procedures. Playbooks keep working, and so do the !macros your team uses to call them, so nothing you rely on today needs to change. When you write something new, make it a skill: skills are managed and governed through plugins at every scope, from personal to enterprise, and they follow the open Agent Skills standard, so the same file works in Devin and in other AI coding tools.

A playbook is a reusable task template stored in the Devin web app and shared across your organization: the task, the inputs it needs, the step-by-step, what "done" looks like, and what to never do. It solves the same problem as a skill: a procedure your team runs over and over, written down once so everyone gets the same result.

If you have playbooks today, here's how to work with them:

• Use one: in a new session, mention one with @Playbooks or attach one via + → Add Files → Playbooks, then fill in the specifics. Playbooks don't get a macro by default; set one (a !shortcut like !dep-bump) under Settings & Library → Playbooks, and typing it in any prompt attaches the playbook.
• Make a new one: after a successful session, ask Devin to turn it into a skill rather than a playbook.
• Fix one: when a run goes sideways, edit the playbook rather than patching a one-off prompt.

A skill covers the same job for most procedures, and it can also be picked up automatically, live in your repository, and be shared at any scope through plugins. When you next revise a playbook your team relies on, consider asking Devin to rewrite it as a skill. Keep it as a playbook if something else depends on it, like an API integration that starts sessions with a playbook_id.