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LangBot ships four extension mechanisms in parallel — plugins, MCP, Skills, and the sandbox — and they are easy to confuse. This page sorts out what each one does and when to use it.

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One-line Summary

  • Sandbox: an execution environment that lets the Agent run commands and read/write files
  • Skills: on-demand instruction packages that hand the Agent a specialized workflow when needed
  • MCP Server: connects to external tool services
  • Plugin: a long-running extension process that can ship its own config page, event listeners, and knowledge components

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Comparison

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Pipeline Binding

Skills, MCP Servers, and plugins are all pipeline extensions. After installing or creating them in the WebUI, the pipeline extension config still decides where they’re enabled:
  • Enable all extensions, or
  • Bind only specific extensions
Skill binding decides which skills the Agent can see (it controls the <available_skills> list). The actual skill content is only injected after the Agent calls activate.

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Troubleshooting Map

Sandbox built-in tools and Skills currently target the built-in Agent. External runners (Dify, n8n, Langflow, Coze, etc.) should use their own tools and execution model.