Angreal Task Automation Skill

This skill teaches angreal task automation - both using existing tasks as an AI agent and authoring new tasks as a developer.

What Angreal Is For

Angreal is focused on development tasks within software projects:

• Building and testing code
• Running linters and formatters
• Generating documentation
• Managing development workflows
• Project-specific automation

Angreal is NOT for:

• Installing or maintaining software distributions
• System-level package management
• Deployment pipelines to production (though it can trigger them)
• CI/CD infrastructure setup

Think of angreal as your project's make or npm run - development-time task automation.

Prerequisites

• Angreal MCP server connected and available
• Working within an angreal project (has .angreal/ directory)

What This Skill Provides

The Angreal MCP server teaches how to call tools (parameters, syntax). This skill teaches when and why.

• When to use which task
• How to discover and understand available tasks
• How to author effective task definitions
• Common patterns and anti-patterns

Two Perspectives

Using Tasks (AI Agent)

See using/discovery.md for:

• Finding available tasks in a project
• Understanding task descriptions and arguments
• Choosing the right task for the job

See using/execution.md for:

• Invoking tasks correctly
• Handling arguments and flags
• Interpreting output and errors

See using/workflows.md for:

• Common multi-task workflows
• Task sequencing patterns
• Project lifecycle tasks

Authoring Tasks (Developer)

See authoring/basics.md for:

• Creating task files
• The @command decorator
• Basic task structure

See authoring/groups.md for:

• Organizing tasks with @group
• Creating command hierarchies
• Reusable group decorators

See authoring/tool-descriptions.md for:

• Writing effective ToolDescription
• Guiding AI agents with prose
• Risk levels and annotations

See authoring/arguments.md for:

• The @argument decorator
• Argument types and validation
• Flags, defaults, and requirements

See authoring/best-practices.md for:

• Naming conventions
• Error handling patterns
• Organization strategies

Common Patterns

See patterns/testing.md for test automation patterns. See patterns/documentation.md for doc generation patterns. See patterns/development.md for dev workflow patterns.

Quick Reference

Task File Location

project/
└── .angreal/
    ├── utils.py         # Shared utilities across tasks
    ├── task_dev.py      # Development tasks
    ├── task_test.py     # Testing tasks
    ├── task_docs.py     # Documentation tasks
    └── task_deploy.py   # Deployment tasks

You can create shared modules (like utils.py) and import them across task files.

Basic Task Structure

import angreal

@angreal.command(
    name="build",
    about="Build the project",
    tool=angreal.ToolDescription("""
Build the project for distribution.

## When to use
- Before releasing a new version
- Testing production builds

## Examples

angreal build angreal build --release

""", risk_level="safe")
)
@angreal.argument(name="release", long="release", is_flag=True, takes_value=False, help="Build in release mode")
def build(release=False):
    # Implementation
    pass

Key Principles

• Tasks are discoverable - MCP exposes all tasks automatically
• Descriptions are prompts - Write ToolDescription as guidance for AI
• Groups organize - Related commands should share a group
• Arguments are typed - Specify python_type for proper conversion
• Errors are informative - Return meaningful messages on failure