New to Speks? This guide covers what a Spek is, who can create one, how it's structured, and the different ways your team can view them.
1. What is a Spek?
A Spek is a bite-sized, customizable piece of knowledge designed to deliver just-in-time learning and guidance. Think of it as a mini help article or digital flashcard that your team can easily access when and where they need it — right within the tools they use every day.
Speks can be used to document a wide range of information, including:
- Step-by-step walkthroughs
- Internal processes and workflows
- Definitions of key terms or acronyms
- Best practices and how-to guides
By breaking knowledge into digestible chunks, Speks make it easier for your team to find answers quickly, stay aligned, and reduce reliance on tribal knowledge.
2. Who Can Create Speks?
To create Speks, you must have an Account Admin, Team Admin, or Expert-level role in Spekit. Your admin can give you access to the User Management screen under Spekit Settings.
3. Understanding the Terminology and Settings on a Spek
Creating a Spek in Spekit is as simple as writing an email, thanks to our intuitive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor. Click here to learn more about our editor.
- Spek title — The name of the Spek. Next to it is a sparkle "Smart Title" icon — clicking it sends your current draft content to Spekit AI and auto-generates a title from it. It's disabled until there's content in the editor. Below the field, "Do you want to embed this Spek?" links out to embed options.
- Formatting toolbar — Components, Insert, embed/code, undo, text style, Bold/Italic/Underline/Strikethrough, lists, indent, alignment, clear formatting, and heading controls for the rich text editor.
- Content area — The main body of the Spek. Supports formatted text, images, video, embeds, and starting-point templates.
- Doc / Slides toggle — Switches the editor between two content modes: Doc (a standard document) and Slides (a slide-deck/presentation editor with a slide-thumbnail sidebar for adding and reordering slides). Choosing Slides marks the Spek as a presentation rather than a standard document. (This toggle only appears when your org has the relevant editor and presentation features enabled.)
- Publish content — Saves and publishes the Spek with the settings below.
- Close (X) — Exits the Create Spek modal.
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AI content builder panel — A pinned, collapsible panel on the right side of the editor. Expanding it opens a chat-style AI assistant that can generate or insert content directly into the editor, alongside similarity/duplicate-content suggestions to help avoid creating redundant Speks. (Available when your org has this feature enabled.)
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Type — Determines whether this is a standard piece of content or a reusable template:
- Content: a standard Spek.
- Template: a reusable, shareable starting point intended for the template gallery (this reveals a "Template instructions" field to guide AI/users on how to use it). (Only shown when your org has Spek Templates enabled.)
- Share settings — Allow external sharing — Marks the Spek as eligible for external sharing. This doesn't itself create a link — it's the permission gate that a separate "share externally" / trackable-link flow checks later before it will generate an external link for this content. If your org has disabled external sharing org-wide, this control is locked with an explanatory message. (Templates can't be externally shared unless your org also has Deal Rooms enabled.)
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Topics (required) — Organizes the Spek and determines where it appears and who can access it. The dropdown only shows Topics you have permission to publish into.
- Note: Topics can be restricted to specific teams. Only users on teams with access to a given Topic can view Speks filed under it — manage this through the Topic's own settings. A "+ Create Topic" shortcut sits next to the field.
- Learning Paths — Attaches the Spek to one or more Learning Paths after it's created, so it appears as part of that learning sequence. (Only shown when Learning Paths is enabled for your org.)
- Expert — Assigns a subject-matter expert to the Spek. The assigned expert is notified they've been made responsible for this content. Defaults to you as the creator, but is clearable/changeable.
- Salesforce Objects — Links the Spek to one or more Salesforce objects so it surfaces in the Spekit Sidebar whenever that object is open in Salesforce. Objects are populated from your org's Salesforce connection/sync rather than created ad hoc here.
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Custom Fields (e.g., "Category") — Admin-defined metadata fields (string, multi-select, or date type) used for extra organization and searchability. The fields and options shown here (like "Category") aren't built-in — they're whatever your Spekit Admin has configured for your company under Admin Tools, scoped to which content types they apply to.
When you're ready, click the Publish button to save your Spek. Need to make changes later? No problem — you can update any field at any time. If you change your mind while creating a Spek, just click the X in the top corner to cancel and close the creation window.