marketing-preflight

name	marketing-preflight
platforms	["cowork","claude-code"]
description	Internal skill — invoked automatically by other Tiger Data marketing skills to verify the Tiger Den connector is reachable and log usage attribution. Do not invoke directly; if you need to check connector health, use plugin-doctor instead. This skill is the single source of truth for the Tiger Den pre-flight protocol — connectivity check, attribution call, and error handling.

Marketing Pre-flight

Internal skill. Invoked at the start of other Tiger Data marketing skills to (1) confirm the Tiger Den connector is reachable and (2) record a usage attribution event so we know which skill ran. Centralizing this protocol here means the pre-flight logic lives in exactly one place — when it changes, calling skills don't need to be updated.

Do not invoke this skill directly. If you're trying to check whether your environment is healthy, run /plugin-doctor instead. If you somehow ended up here with no calling skill, just stop — there's nothing for you to do.

Inputs

The calling skill should pass its own name: field (from its SKILL.md frontmatter) as the args string when invoking this skill via the Skill tool. Example: a skill named content-scout invokes this skill with args: "content-scout".

• If args contains a non-empty skill name: use it for the attribution call in Step 2.
• If args is empty or missing: still do Step 1 (connectivity check), but skip Step 2 silently. Do not error or warn the user — attribution is best-effort.

Step 1 — Connectivity check

Call:

list_marketing_references()

This is a lightweight call that confirms the Tiger Den connector is authorized and responding.

If it succeeds: continue to Step 2.

If the tool is not found or the call fails: STOP. Do not attempt to work around it, do not fall back to other data sources, and do not return control to the calling skill to "try anyway." Tell the user:

"The Tiger Den connector is needed for this, but it's not responding. Let's troubleshoot — I'll run a quick health check."

Then invoke the /plugin-doctor skill to diagnose the issue. If /plugin-doctor is not available, give the manual fix:

• Cowork: "Go to Settings (gear icon) → Connectors → find the Tiger Den connector → click Connect and sign in. Then start a new session and try again."
• Claude Code: "Run claude mcp add -s user --transport http tiger_den https://den.tigerdata.com/api/mcp/mcp in a separate terminal, then restart Claude Code."

Why this matters: reference docs contain brand voice, positioning, terminology, and quality standards. Calling skills writing without them produce generic, off-brand output. It is always better to stop and fix the connection than to proceed without context.

Step 2 — Record skill invocation (attribution)

If args contained a skill name, call report_skill_invocation, passing the actual string from args as the skill_name parameter. For example, if args was "content-scout", the call should be report_skill_invocation(skill_name: "content-scout") — do NOT pass the literal placeholder text from this doc.

• If it succeeds: continue. The calling skill can now proceed with its workflow.
• If the tool is not available or errors out (e.g., older Tiger Den connector that doesn't expose this tool): skip it silently. Do not retry. Do not block the workflow. Set the "stale connector" footer note (see Return contract below) so the caller can surface it at the end of their response.

Attribution must never block the calling skill. If something is wrong with the attribution tool, the user still gets their skill output — they just see a one-line note about reconnecting.

Return contract

After this skill completes successfully, the calling skill can assume:

1. Tiger Den is reachable. No need to re-check before fetching reference docs in the rest of the workflow.

2. Attribution has been attempted (if a skill name was passed). It either succeeded silently, or this skill flagged a stale-connector footer for the caller to surface.

3. Footer note (conditional). If Step 2's report_skill_invocation was unavailable or errored, the calling skill should append this line verbatim at the very end of its final response to the user, after all its normal output:

   Heads up: your Tiger Den connector looks out of date — reconnect it when convenient to enable usage attribution.

   Don't interrupt the workflow with this; it's a footer, not a blocker. If Step 2 succeeded, no footer is needed.

If this skill STOPped in Step 1, control does not return to the caller — the user gets the connectivity error message and (ideally) a /plugin-doctor run.