The 5 Skills Every Integrator Should Have in Their Cookbook

I keep a small set of skills I install on almost every engagement. Five of them. Not because they’re the flashiest — because they’re the ones that actually survive contact with a real client running a real business.

If you’re new to integrator work, this is the cookbook I’d start from.

1. Client Reporter

What it does: pulls analytics and ad data into a branded PDF.

Why I install it first: it replaces the most repetitive manual task in any agency-shaped client. The first ship has to be visible and useful within a week. Reporting hits both.

The math is simple enough that the client gets it on a kickoff call. Manual reporting eats hours per client per month. With ten clients, that’s a meaningful chunk of someone’s week. The skill is free, runs on the client’s machine, and produces a deliverable they already produce manually — so the trust bar is low.

Read the full install guide at /blog/ship-client-reports-without-code.

2. Proposal Builder

What it does: turns a template plus a one-line briefing into a finished proposal draft.

Why I install it second: proposals are the lifeblood of new business for agency clients. They’re also high-friction. A client who can ship proposals faster wins more business and bills me for the next skill.

The key constraint: the AI assembles, doesn’t invent. It pulls from the client’s existing case studies and pricing. I never let it generate claims the client will sign their name to.

Read the full install guide at /blog/custom-requests-to-production-agents.

3. SEO Audit Runner

What it does: technical SEO audit on any URL — crawl errors, Core Web Vitals, meta tags, schema, internal linking.

Why I install it: SEO audits are a standard agency deliverable, either as a paid service or as a lead magnet. Either way, manually running them eats half a day per audit. The skill cuts that to a short review pass.

The economics work both ways. Paid audits become near-pure margin. Lead-magnet audits become free to produce, so the agency can offer them without thinking.

4. Cold Outreach with Real Research

What it does: researches prospects, writes personalised first lines, sends through the client’s existing email infrastructure.

Why this skill is on the list and most “outreach” tools aren’t: the personalisation actually has to be real. “I noticed you work in marketing” is not personalisation. The skill goes deeper — recent posts, recent moves, recent product changes — and writes a first line that proves the AI read something specific.

The reply-rate gap between real research and template personalisation is enormous. Anyone who’s tried both knows.

5. Competitive Intelligence

What it does: monitors a list of competitors weekly. Pricing changes, ad creatives, social cadence, product launches. Outputs a briefing.

Why I install it last: it’s a value-add, not a core deliverable. But it’s the skill that makes a retainer client stickier. “We monitor your competitors weekly” is hard to walk away from once it’s part of the relationship.

Easy to set up, easy to demo, the kind of thing that justifies a price bump on the next contract.

The rule I follow

Five skills. Same five every time, customised per client.

Why same five? Because I want my engagements to be handoff-able. If every client has a wildly different stack of automations, I can’t go on holiday without something breaking. Standardising the cookbook means I can hand any of these clients to another integrator, or hand them to themselves, and the install survives.

The integrator job rewards leverage, not novelty. A small, well-known cookbook is more valuable than a big, fancy one.

Install

pipx install wiserecipes
wiserecipes install client-reporter

Client Reporter is free. The rest live on the Cook ($20/mo) and Operator ($100/mo) tiers. Browse the full catalog at /library or see pricing at /pricing.

This cookbook covers most of what I install in the first month of any engagement. The catalog has more, but these five are the ones that earn their keep on every contract.