How Skylight works
Skylight puts your church on a map, matches each new person to a small group leader near them, and writes the intro emails for your church to approve. Nothing is emailed until someone approves it.
What you see
You see the people in your territory and the people assigned to you. Home shows what is new. My people shows them on the map: tap anyone for their address, phone, email and groups.
Your church's owner connects Planning Center, and the admins approve emails and look after the routines, so you do not need to do any of that.
On the Accounts tab, Edit on your account changes your name, username and email, and your password (you need your current one).
On the Skylight Agent tab, type what you want in plain words; Skylight's agent looks it up for you, with only your people.
1. Connect Planning Center
On the Connect tab, the owner or a super admin enters the Application ID and Secret of a Personal Access Token from api.planningcenteronline.com, then connects the Gmail account approved emails should come from.
2. Sync
Sync now (on Home, and on the Connect tab) is a quick sync: it brings in the people and groups that changed in Planning Center since the last sync and places each new address on the map. Full sync on the Connect tab reads everything again, including every group's members and every People List; Skylight also runs one by itself when the last full sync is more than a day old. Routines sync before they run. Skylight only reads from Planning Center; it never changes anything there.
To have changes to people in Planning Center reach Skylight within about a minute, the owner or a super admin turns on the webhook once, after Planning Center is connected:
- On the Connect tab, copy the Webhook URL (Planning Center calls it the subscription URL).
- In Planning Center, open api.planningcenteronline.com/webhooks and add a new subscription URL with the link you copied.
- Tick the People events person created, person updated and person destroyed.
That is all: there is nothing else to copy. Skylight reads the rest from Planning Center, and the Connect tab says whether Planning Center is sending changes and for how many events.
3. The map and People
Maps has two parts. Maps, then Published maps shows everyone: leaders, group members and new people. Pick a Group or a People List to see just its people. A new person shows as New until the intro email for them is approved or discarded; a sync does not change that. Maps, then Territories shows the part of town each leader covers, and Fill in areas for leaders gives each leader the part of town closest to them. There, the owner, a super admin or an admin can add a territory: give it a name, then draw it on the map (tap each corner, as many as you like, then Done) or make it from a location, an address or a leader's home plus a radius in miles. A circle around a leader's home is assigned to that leader and is made once: it stays where it is if they move, and Redraw changes it. Rename, Redraw and Delete are on each territory. Assign gives a territory to one or more leaders and accounts, and one account can have several; Reassign hands it to someone else in one step. A user account sees the people living in every territory assigned to it. The People tab lists everyone: pick a People List or a group to see just those people, and tap anyone to open their page and see them on the map.
4. Email an area
In Maps, then Published maps, the owner, a super admin or an admin can write to everyone in one part of town, for an event or a promotion. Tap Draw an area and tap each corner on the map, then Done, or pick a territory. Choose one email to each person inside, or one email to each small group leader who looks after people inside, listing those people. Fill in the event, then tap Create drafts for approval. Every email waits in Approvals.
To write to one person, open their page in People, or tap them on the map. Email them writes to them directly. Ask (the person responsible for them) to reach out writes to whoever looks after them, with the person's name, address, phone and email in it: the leader or account they were assigned to by hand, else their small group's leader, else the leader whose territory they live in, else the leader they were matched to. The Responsible line on their page shows that same person and how they were found. Write the subject and message yourself, or leave them empty and Skylight's agent writes them. Either way the email waits in Approvals, and it goes from your own Gmail if you connected one, else from the church's.
5. Approvals
Every email a routine writes waits under Approvals. The owner, a super admin or an admin reads it, edits it if needed, then approves to send it or discards it. People a routine could not match arrive there too, as a decision rather than an email: each says why, with their suggested leader (the closest one) already chosen. One tap writes the intro to that leader, which then waits for your approval like any email; you can also choose someone else or leave them. Nothing is sent to you or to anyone when a person is handed to you.
Your assistant can also write an email in full and put it here, to anyone, even someone who is not in Skylight. Its card says Written by your assistant and shows any note it left for you. Nothing about the recipient is added to People. Read it, edit it if needed, then approve to send it or discard it, the same as any other email; your assistant can never send it on its own.
To give a person to a different leader, tap Reassign on their card in Approvals or on their page in People. If they had an intro email waiting, a new one is written to the new leader, and later syncs and routine runs keep your choice.
6. Routines and rules
A routine looks for people added in Planning Center since its last run, matches each to a leader, and drafts the intro email. Pressing Sync now between runs does not hide anyone from it: the next run still picks up everyone added since its last run, once. Under When it runs you say when in your own words, for example every 30 minutes, every hour, once a day at 9am, every 2 days at 7:30 pm or every Monday at 8am. Times are in your church's time zone, which you set under Church settings at the top of the Accounts tab, and a schedule of days with no time runs at 9:00 AM. Under the box Skylight says how it read your words and when the routine runs next; if it cannot read them, it says so and you cannot save until it can. You can also tick When Planning Center adds a person, or use only that: after a sync brings in someone new (Sync now, or the Planning Center webhook above), the routine runs once, and a burst of new people is one run. Each routine card says when it runs next, and a routine you turn off runs neither way.
To add one, tap Add a routine and describe it in your own words: who to match and how, a neighborhood, a distance, and who the emails come from. If your description names who the emails come from and that matches one account (or the church), Skylight sets it and shows what it understood before you save; if not, it says so and keeps the choice under More settings. Then say when it runs, give it a name if you like, and tap Save routine. More settings holds the neighborhood map, the distance limit (blank means no limit), whose routine it is, and On or Off. It works the same as a routine your assistant sets up. To remove one, tap Delete routine on its card, then Yes, delete it. Its run history goes with it; emails it already wrote stay in Approvals.
You can give a routine a rule in plain words. Skylight's agent follows it, every match is checked against your map, and anyone the rule does not match comes to you as one list. For example:
- If the new person lives inside a neighborhood group's boundary, match them to that group's leader.
- If not, but a leader lives within 3 miles, match the nearest leader.
- Otherwise, list them for me.
The 3 miles is only an example: use whatever distance fits your town, or none. The distance limit is yours to set on each routine; blank means no limit. Under the rule, the Routines tab shows how Skylight read it, so you can check it before the next run.
7. Accounts
Church settings at the top of the Accounts tab hold your church's name and its time zone. The owner, super admins and admins change them: Edit next to the name renames the church everywhere it shows, and Save time zone sets the time zone routine times use. Until one is saved, the time zone of the device you are on is suggested; nothing changes until you press Save time zone.
On the Accounts tab you add the people who sign in. A super admin can add super admins, admins and users; an admin can add users. Each person signs in here with the username and password you give them; the owner can also sign in with the owner key. Edit on an account changes its name, username, email, role and who they are in Planning Center. An admin edits users only. Everyone can edit their own name, username and email and change their own password with their current one; nobody can raise their own role, and the only super admin stays one until you make someone else a super admin. Only the owner and super admins can change the Connect tab (Planning Center, Gmail and API keys). An admin approves emails, emails an area and reassigns people. A user sees the people in the territories assigned to them and the people assigned to them.
8. Your own assistant (MCP)
Any assistant that supports MCP can work with Skylight: read your people and map, draw on maps, run routines and write drafts. It cannot approve or send email; only the owner, a super admin or an admin can, here.
| Server URL | |
| Header | Authorization: Bearer your API key |
The API key starts with sk_. The owner or a super admin makes one on the Connect tab and pastes it into the assistant's settings; it is shown only once. Usernames, passwords and the owner key (so_) are only for signing in here: never give them to an assistant. If a key gets out, make a new one and the old one stops working.
Webhooks for your assistant, on the Connect tab, let Skylight tell your assistant, Zapier or n8n when something happens: a new person, a match, a person for you to decide about, an email waiting, approved, sent or discarded, or a routine run finishing. Add the web address, tick what to send and copy the secret, which is shown once. Send test event checks it works. A webhook that keeps failing turns itself off and says so.
9. Skylight Agent
The Skylight Agent tab is a text box. Type what you want in plain words, for example "Who has no small group leader within 3 miles?" or "Draft an invite for everyone in a territory to a block party Saturday". The prompts under Try one use your own church's people, territories and small groups. Skylight's agent works your Skylight data with the same tools as a connected assistant, picking each step itself, and shows each step as it happens, then its answer with links to the people it names, Approvals or the map.
It can do what both you and your assistant may do, and nothing more. It cannot approve or send email: anything it writes waits in Approvals for you, and it says so. Each step is in the Activity as Skylight's agent, with who asked. The session stays in this browser tab; New agent session starts over.