---
id: extend-dex
title: Give Dex new powers
area: Make it yours
order: 84
summary: Dex can absorb other open-source tools — new eyes, ears, and hands. The repositories Dave actually runs, in the order worth meeting them, and two prompts that keep you current as the list grows.
---

Everything on [Make Dex your own](make-it-your-own.html) shapes what Dex already has. This page is about giving it things it doesn't: because Dex runs on Claude Code, it can read, understand, and wire in code from anywhere — which means any good open-source project on GitHub is a set of abilities waiting for a home. You're not limited to what Dex ships with; you're limited by what exists — and a lot exists.

What follows is the list Dave actually runs — the projects that have earned a permanent place in his own Dex — in the order worth meeting them. It changes as he finds better ones, which is exactly why the prompts at the end exist.

## How installing works — and stays safe

You don't clone anything or read any code. Name the project to Dex — *"install github.com/x/y into my Dex"* — and Dex reads the project's own documentation, explains in plain language what it does and what it needs, wires it in, and asks before anything runs.

Two honest rules keep this safe:

- **Only install what you trust.** A repository is code someone else wrote — the same judgment you'd apply to installing any app applies here. If you don't know the project, ask Dex to read it first and tell you what it actually does.
- **Dex asking first is the design, not friction.** New tools get your explicit yes before they ever run unattended, and `/dex-doctor` checks on them afterwards like everything else.

## Start by giving Dex hands

### [browser-harness](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-harness) — a browser that doesn't give up

Browser automation has existed for years, and it mostly shares one flaw: the moment a website does something awkward — a popup, a redesign, a stubborn date-picker — the automation falls over. browser-harness is different in kind: when it hits an obstacle, it writes itself new code on the spot and keeps going. Self-healing, in the truest sense.

What that means in practice is you can hand Dex the kind of chore you'd never trust to a "bot":

> Find me the cheapest night at the Westbury in Dublin between now and four months from now.

…and walk away. It also works in the Chrome you're already signed into, so Dex can step into the products you actually use — pull up a screen, take the screenshots, drop them onto a Miro board through its connector — the sort of errand that used to mean twenty minutes of clicking.

### [PrintingPress](https://github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press) — turn any website into a tool Dex can use

Driving a website is one thing; what if Dex could keep it as a tool? Plenty of the systems you rely on — an internal wiki, a team database, a niche industry site — offer no official way for an agent to plug in. PrintingPress builds one: it signs in as you (or just visits, if no sign-in is needed), explores the site until it understands how it's organised, and produces a small purpose-built tool your agent can use from then on — doing the job of a full connector at a fraction of the running cost.

Dave's real example: his team at Pendo keeps a brilliant Notion database, and he wanted his agent to be able to pull from it without paying for Notion's own AI add-ons. Twenty minutes with PrintingPress, and his agent had a programmable way in — permanently. Any structured website or database can get the same treatment, and [printingpress.dev](https://printingpress.dev) hosts a growing gallery of what others have built with it — worth a browse purely for the ideas.

## Then upgrade how you write — and how you read

### [Roughdraft](https://github.com/Lex-Inc/roughdraft) — comment on drafts like a real editor

When Dex writes something for you — a blog post, a board note, any real prose — reading it in a chat window is the wrong tool. Roughdraft opens the draft in your browser and lets you leave inline comments exactly where the problem is, the way you would in a doc. You mark it up; Dex revises; repeat until it's right. If you write anything for a living audience, this becomes the loop.

### [visual-explainer](https://github.com/nicobailon/visual-explainer) — when the text is just too much

Some things shouldn't be read; they should be *seen*. Hand this a dense document — a strategy paper, a technical proposal, a fifty-message thread — and it builds you a clean visual page that explains what's actually being said and what the trade-offs are. For anyone who thinks in pictures and drowns in paragraphs, this is the escape hatch.

## Learn anything, properly

### [teach](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/teach/SKILL.md) — a course that adapts to you

Most learning fails at one of two speeds: too complicated, so you switch off — or too easy, so you never lean in. Good teaching lives in the tension between the two. This skill builds you a real course on any topic, running locally in your browser, that you can come back to any time. It remembers where you left off, watches how you're doing, and adjusts the difficulty to keep you at that productive edge. Want to properly understand Claude Code itself? Have it teach you.

## Become the most market-aware person in the room

### [last30days](https://github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skill) — what people are actually saying

What people are saying about any topic, right now, across Reddit, X, YouTube and more — with receipts, not vibes. "What's the sentiment on…" becomes a question with a real answer.

### [Scrapling](https://github.com/D4Vinci/Scrapling) — competitive intelligence on a schedule

This one already ships inside Dex (`/scrape`) — it's on the list because most people never realize what it's *for*. The move: have it read your competitors' help pages, break what it finds into the jobs their product does for customers, and diff that against last week. Over time you see exactly where each competitor is investing, what's shifting, and — most valuable of all — the white space nobody is building in. A standing weekly brief on your market, built from what competitors publish about themselves.

## Sharpen your judgment

### [council-of-high-intelligence](https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence) — a panel for your hardest calls

Convenes a council of history's sharpest thinkers — the strategist, the systems thinker, the skeptic — to deliberate on your decision from genuinely different angles. Not for daily use; for the three decisions a quarter where being wrong is expensive.

### [wayfinder](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/wayfinder/SKILL.md) — coaches the idea out of you

The rarest kind of help: not answers, questions. Wayfinder draws out an idea you've half-formed — for a product, for Dex, for anything — and walks you down the path of figuring out what it actually is and where it should go. Like having a coach whose only job is getting *your* thinking out of your head.

## And when you're ready to build

### [compound-engineering](https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin) — how serious work gets planned

Every's toolkit of planning, reviewing, and brainstorming skills. Built for software teams, but the loop — brainstorm honestly, plan properly, then have your plan adversarially critiqued before you commit — works on any serious piece of work you'll ever do.

## The writer behind two of these

Two entries above — teach and wayfinder — come from [Matt Pocock's skills folder](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills), and it's worth saying plainly: he's one of the best skill writers there is, and the folder holds far more than the two picked here. Rather than browse it yourself, make Dex do the matching:

```prompt The skill matchmaker
Go read Matt Pocock's skills folder at github.com/mattpocock/skills.
Based on everything you know about me from our chats — my role, what I
struggle with, what I keep asking you for — which of his skills would
genuinely earn a place in my setup? Pick your top two, make the case
for each in two sentences, and install the ones I approve.
```

## Two prompts that make this page live

The first treats the list as a menu — with your own judgment applied, not blind copying:

```prompt Install what Dave runs
Read the list at https://heydex.ai/help/extend-dex.html. For each
repository, tell me what it would add to MY setup specifically — given
my role, my tools, and how you've watched me work — and give me your
honest verdict: worth it for me, or not, and why. Then install the ones
I approve, one at a time, asking before anything runs.
```

The second turns the page into a subscription — Dex watches it so you don't have to:

```prompt Watch this page for me
Add a check to my daily plan (or a scheduled job, your call): once a
week, read https://heydex.ai/help/extend-dex.html and compare it against
what we already have installed. When something new appears on the list,
explain what it is, what it would give me, and why Dave likely added it
— then ask if I want it. Never install anything from one of these checks
without my explicit yes.
```

**Make it your own:** when you find a repository that earns its place in *your* Dex, tell Dex what you want it for — the setup conversation is where a general-purpose tool turns into one that fits your week.