_template
SkillAI & modelsThis is the starter template from Apify's awesome-skills collection, a community library of skills for AI coding assistants. Adding it gives your AI a ready-made starting point for a new skill, so you can shape it into your own ability instead of building from scratch.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
After adding it, review the template and adjust it to match what you want your AI to do. More examples are available in the collection at github.com/apify/awesome-skills.
Then ask your AI: use the _template skill
What your AI can do with it
- Start a new skill from a ready-made structure
- See how a skill in the awesome-skills collection is put together
- Adapt the template into a custom skill for your AI
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by apify/awesome-skills in skills/_template/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
REPLACE: One-line summary of what this skill helps the agent accomplish.
Example prompts
Prompts this skill handles:
- "REPLACE: a real prompt a user would type"
- "REPLACE: a second one, phrased differently"
Out of scope (the boundary):
- "REPLACE: a nearby request this skill deliberately does not handle — and where to send it instead"
Prerequisites
- Apify account (sign up)
- Authentication via one of:
apify login(OAuth, if using the Apify CLI)APIFY_TOKENenvironment variable- Token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations
Workflow
- REPLACE: Understand the user's goal, pick the right Actor(s).
- REPLACE: Fetch the Actor's input schema, build a valid input.
- REPLACE: Run the Actor, confirm with user if estimated cost is significant.
- REPLACE: Deliver results (count, format, link to dataset/console).
For a worked 4-step workflow, see apify/agent-skills ultimate-scraper.
Actor routing
| User need | Actor ID | Tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| REPLACE | apify/REPLACE-actor | apify | REPLACE |
| REPLACE | community/REPLACE-actor | community | REPLACE |
Tier = apify (Apify-maintained, prefer) or community (third-party).
Calling Actors — choose your interface
Skills in this repo can call Actors via any of these interfaces. Pick the one that fits your runtime; cross-tool compatibility is your responsibility.
Option A: Apify CLI (recommended for portability)
Works in any shell-capable agent. Three flags on every call:
apify actors call "ACTOR_ID" -i 'JSON_INPUT' \
--json \
--user-agent apify-awesome-skills/REPLACE-skill-name \
2>/dev/null
| Flag | Why |
|---|---|
--json | Stable machine-readable output |
--user-agent | Apify telemetry attribution |
2>/dev/null | Suppress progress messages that break JSON |
Other useful commands:
# Search Actors
apify actors search "KEYWORDS" --json --limit 10 \
--user-agent apify-awesome-skills/REPLACE-skill-name 2>/dev/null
# Fetch Actor schema
apify actors info "ACTOR_ID" --input --json \
--user-agent apify-awesome-skills/REPLACE-skill-name 2>/dev/null
# Fetch results
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID --format json \
--user-agent apify-awesome-skills/REPLACE-skill-name 2>/dev/null
For the canonical command set with all flags, see apify/agent-skills ultimate-scraper.
Option B: Apify MCP connector
Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com. Documented at https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp.
Option C: MCP client of your choice (e.g. mcpc)
Standalone CLI client. See https://github.com/apify/mcpc.
Troubleshooting
- REPLACE: common error 1 → fix
- REPLACE: common error 2 → fix
- For detailed cost guardrails and recovery, see references/gotchas.md.
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 252
- Forks
- 65
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
template-apify- Source
- github.com/apify/awesome-skills