Write automation

Skill tale-project/tale/builtin-configs/skills/write-automation

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Install

npx -y skills add tale-project/tale --skill write-automation

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One thing to look at

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What its author says it does

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Use this skill whenever you create or update an automation in a Tale organization — the installable bundle that groups workflows, agents, views, integrations, and configuration behind one manifest. Triggers include: "build an automation", "package these workflows and agents", "add a view or config field to an automation", or "make X installable". Never author a bundle without it — and never create one before listing the existing automations and ruling out extending one. For the pieces inside the bundle, use write-workflow, write-agent, write-skill, and write-integration.

SKILL.md

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write-automation

An automation is the installable bundle; the workflows inside it are the trigger→steps definitions it runs. Installing an automation copies the whole bundle into the org and groups its entities under the manifest folder: its agents and workflows stay inside automations/<slug>/ and are addressed as <slug>/<name> — they never join the org's global agent roster or workflow tree.

Reuse before you create — tick every box

List the installed and available automations first.
One already covers the job → use it; create nothing.
One covers it partially → extend that bundle (a view, a workflow, a config field).
Nothing fits → only then author a new bundle.

Bundle anatomy

<slug>/                     the dir PATH is the automation's slug — kebab-case segments,
                             '/'-separated, ≤4 segments, ≤128 chars. The path is where the
                             automation is FILED: `gmail/sync-emails` lives in the `gmail`
                             folder; a bare `my-automation` sits at the root.
  automation.json           the manifest — the bundle's whole contract (name/description +
                             an inline i18n block translate it; see Translations below)
  icon.svg                  the card icon
  views/*.json              the automation's UI pages (a project-scoped automation's views
                             render as first-class PROJECT tabs — one view = one tab, with the
                             view's own `tabs` inside it; org-scoped views render on the
                             automation's page)
  agents/*.json             optional — automation-owned agents (see write-agent)
  scripts/…                 optional assets, referenced as pack://<slug>/…

Caps: ≤2 MiB per file, ≤20 MiB decompressed, ≤500 entries.

The manifest (`automation.json`)

name (required — literal display string; the slug is the dir name); description; icon (a lucide icon name); labels (≤6 literal chip strings); scope — org (default) or project (bound to one project at install).
i18n — per-locale overrides of name/description (and requires.config field labels), e.g. { "de": { "name": "…", "description": "…" } }. The manifest translates ITSELF — there is no separate label catalog; see Translations below.
workflows / agents — the slugs of the bundle's own definitions.
integrations — integration slugs whose DEFINITIONS the install copies into the org (connector + config, never credentials — those are collected per-org by the setup wizard).
roles — role token → agent slug (e.g. "reviewer": "<slug>/desk-reviewer"), the cast the views can assign work to.

The `requires` grammar — the readiness contract

What must be provided per-org before the automation works; it drives the setup checklist:

requires.integrations — slugs whose credential must be connected.
requires.config — form fields the install wizard collects (non-secret, app-level): each field has key, type, a literal label (+ optional placeholder/help), and optionally optional, multiline, and derive (pattern + into — split one input into derived keys, e.g. a repo URL into owner/repo). Translate a field's copy via i18n.<locale>.config.<key> (see Translations).

The `capabilities` allowlist — what views may DO

A view action can never act beyond the manifest's declared surface:

capabilities.workflows — the only valid trigger_workflow targets.
capabilities.roles — the only valid assign targets. Plus capabilities.queues.
capabilities.functions — the exact platform functions views may call, each entry { "path": "<dir>/<file>:<export>", "mode": "query" | "mutation" | "action" }. Anything not listed is refused at dispatch and rejected at publish.

Translations

An automation translates ITSELF — there is no separate per-bundle label catalog (a retired messages/<locale>.json dir is accepted on upload but silently ignored). Add an i18n block to automation.json with one entry per non-English locale carrying name/description overrides (+ config.<key>.label/placeholder/help for requires.config fields); an absent locale or field falls back to the top-level literal. View documents (views/*.json) author English literals plus optional sibling i18n maps at every display site: the view's title/description, each tab's label, block props (i18n.<locale>.title/text/description on Text/Alert/Card/Heading and the data blocks' titles), and every labeled entry — table columns, list filters, select options, detail fields, board lanes, stats, chart series — via i18n.<locale>.label (+ .valueLabels.<raw> where the entry maps badge values). Unlocalized literals render as authored. Description strings render as Markdown (GFM; lone newlines become line breaks) — write them for reading, not one line. Ship native de/fr copy for a builtin per write-translations.

Validation

Publish/upload rejects a broken bundle with a precise error — INVALID_BUNDLE, INVALID_VIEW, VIEW_BINDING_NOT_ALLOWED (a view calls a function outside capabilities.functions) — so nothing broken lands on an org. Bundled workflows also pass full definition validation. Keep the manifest minimal and every referenced slug real.

Siblings: write-workflow, write-agent, write-skill, write-integration — author the pieces with their own skills, then compose them here.