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. Email waits in Approvals, with two exceptions: when a super admin has turned on auto-send on the Accounts tab, an email to a Skylight account with a confirmed email goes out right away and shows in Approvals as sent; and a routine's note to its own user always goes out without approval.
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. My people also lists your territories: tap Show on map to see one. Only an admin at your church can change a territory.
Your church's owner connects Planning Center, and the admins approve emails, so you do not need to do any of that.
On the Routines tab you can set up a routine for your own area. On your schedule, it checks for new people in your territory, sends you a note about each one, and drafts an intro to each new person that waits in Approvals. The note to you goes out without approval. Tap Add a routine, say when it runs, and tap Save routine. You can turn it off and on, tap Run now, see its last runs, or delete it. Admins can see, pause or delete any routine.
On the Accounts tab, Edit on your account changes your name, username and email, and your password (you need your current one). Forgot it? Use Forgot password? on the sign-in page.
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 clicks Connect Planning Center, signs in to Planning Center and allows Skylight to read People and Groups. Then each person connects the addresses they send from, in their own account, on their own Connect tab: Your Personal Gmail, and Church's General Email if they send from the church's general address. Nobody sends from an address someone else connected. On a Skylight without Planning Center sign-in, they enter the Application ID and Secret of a Personal Access Token from api.planningcenteronline.com instead.
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. The emails wait 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 an address you connected yourself: your own Gmail, or the church address if you connected it too and pick it under Send from (your own is picked unless you change it).
5. Approvals
An 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 cannot approve or send it.
When a super admin has turned on auto-send on the Accounts tab, an email to a Skylight account with a confirmed email goes out right away and shows in Approvals as sent: under Sent and discarded, marked Sent automatically, with its time. An email to anyone else still waits for approval.
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, Skylight shows what it understood before you save: a new routine is always yours, so its emails go from your own address, and if your description names the church, they go from the church address you connected in your own account (if you have not connected one, it tells you to connect it on your Connect tab first). Skylight never sends from another person's address. 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 (yours; an older routine can have nobody yet, and then whoever approves each email sends it from their own address), Send its emails from when you have both your own Gmail and a church address, 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.
A user can set up a routine for their own area, on the Routines tab: on their schedule, it checks for new people in their territory, sends them a note about each one, and drafts an intro to each new person that waits in Approvals. The note to its own user always goes out without approval. It never looks outside that user's territory and assigned people. Admins can see, pause or delete any routine; each one a user set up says whose it is.
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 new account gets an email with a link to set their own password, then signs in here with their username and that password; the link lasts 7 days, and after that they use Forgot password? on the sign-in page, which anyone can use to set a new password. If an email was wrong or got lost, fix the email with Edit and tap Send password link: it emails a fresh link and the older ones stop working. 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 church's connections on the Connect tab (Planning Center and the church's assistant key); everyone connects their own addresses and makes their own assistant key there. 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.
Auto-send to confirmed accounts is a switch under Church settings on the Accounts tab, off until a super admin turns it on; the owner can turn it on too. With it on, an email to a user or admin at your church with a confirmed email goes out right away and shows in Approvals as sent; an account at another church does not count. To anyone else it still waits for approval. Admins see whether it is on. An email is confirmed once its person has used a link Skylight sent to it (the sign-up link or a password link): the account then says Confirmed beside the email. Changing the email makes it Not confirmed again, and Reset password does not confirm it.
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.
To have an assistant write emails, make your own key under Your assistant key on the Connect tab. It writes only from the addresses you connected yourself. If you have both your own Gmail and a church address, an assistant over MCP sees both and has to say which one each email comes from; it has no default.
| Server URL | |
| Header | Authorization: Bearer your API key |
The API key starts with sk_. You make your own on the Connect tab and paste it into the assistant's settings; it is shown only once. The church's own key, which the owner or a super admin makes, can read and map but cannot write emails. 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, and it cannot turn auto-send on or off: what it writes goes to Approvals, 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.