skills

NetBox Validation plugin — declarative policy-based validation of network infrastructure data. Use when working with validation policies, compliance checks, findings, compliance scores, pre-change validation, or agentic safety nets.

NetBox server administration: configuration, authentication backends (local/LDAP/SAML/OIDC), object permissions, API tokens, performance tuning, backups, upgrades, and housekeeping. Use when managing a NetBox instance rather than consuming its API.

Best practices for building integrations with NetBox REST and GraphQL APIs. Use when building NetBox API integrations, reviewing integration code, troubleshooting NetBox performance issues, planning automation architecture, writing scripts that interact with NetBox, using pynetbox, configuring Diode for data ingestion, or implementing NetBox webhooks and branching workflows.

NetBox Assurance drift detection and deviation management. Use when working with network state comparison, deviation review/remediation, data source configuration, or understanding how intended vs actual network state is reconciled in NetBox Cloud and Enterprise.

End-to-end automation patterns with NetBox — event-driven workflows (event rules, webhooks), infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, Terraform), and GitOps integration. Use when building, advising on, or troubleshooting NetBox automation pipelines.

NetBox Branching plugin — create isolated branch schemas for safe change staging, review, and merge. Use when working with branch lifecycle, the X-NetBox-Branch header, async provisioning/sync/merge jobs, conflict resolution, or Change Request integration.

Change request management for NetBox Branching. Covers the CR lifecycle (draft → needs-review → approved → completed), review workflows, policy enforcement, protect_main, and merge gating. Use when working with the netbox_changes plugin API.

How to use NetBox's configuration template system for generating device configs. Covers Jinja2 templates, config contexts, template rendering API, and common patterns. Use when building config generation workflows, automating device provisioning, or integrating NetBox with config management tools.

No-code data model extensibility for NetBox. Create custom object types with typed fields, relationships to core models and other custom objects, full REST API, and standard NetBox features (tags, change logging, search, bookmarks, journaling).

How to write NetBox custom scripts for automation, data validation, and bulk operations. Use when building scripts that run inside NetBox — covers the Script class, form variables, ORM access, logging, transactions, scheduling, and common patterns.

Design and manage NetBox data models effectively. Covers site/location hierarchy, IPAM organization, device modeling, tenant assignment, custom fields vs tags vs config contexts, dependency ordering, and relationship patterns. Use when planning NetBox data structure, importing bulk data, or choosing between extensibility mechanisms.

Patterns for ingesting data into NetBox using the Diode SDK (Python and Go). Use when building network discovery, bulk import, or automated data population integrations that write data to NetBox via gRPC. Covers SDK setup, entity construction, batch ingestion, chunking, reconciler behavior, error handling, and when to use Diode vs the REST API.

Configure and operate Orb Agent for automated network discovery into NetBox. Use when writing agent.yaml configs, setting up network/device/SNMP/worker discovery backends, deploying Orb Agent containers, managing policies and secrets, or troubleshooting discovery pipelines.

Methodology for migrating data into NetBox from spreadsheets, legacy IPAM/DCIM systems, CMDBs, and unstructured sources. Use when planning or executing a data migration — covers assessment, cleaning, dependency ordering, import strategy selection, validation, and post-migration verification with Discovery and Assurance.

How to build NetBox plugins — models, views, REST/GraphQL APIs, forms, tables, filtersets, navigation, template extensions, testing, and packaging. Use this skill when creating, modifying, or debugging a NetBox plugin targeting v4.5+.

Audit and review NetBox data model design choices. Use when evaluating site hierarchy, IPAM organization, device modeling, tenancy patterns, custom field vs tag decisions, naming conventions, and extensibility strategy. Identifies modeling anti-patterns and suggests improvements aligned with NetBox best practices.

Review and audit NetBox integration code for correctness, performance, and reliability. Use when reviewing scripts or applications that interact with NetBox APIs, checking for pagination bugs, authentication issues, performance anti-patterns, error handling gaps, and SDK misuse.

Hub skill for the NetBox ecosystem. Routes to specialized skills for data modeling, API integration, plugin development, change management, discovery, assurance, automation, and migration. Load this skill first to find the right specialist.

NetBox Asset Lifecycle — a commercial NetBox Labs feature that tracks equipment procurement from plan to install (BOMs, vendors, purchase orders, shipments, receiving) plus spares management. Use when working with the asset-lifecycle REST API, driving greenfield procurement or brownfield sparing workflows, or modeling vendors, purchase orders, shipments, and spares pools. Generation, receiving, and install are UI-only — the skill explains how to drive them or hand off.

NetBox Data Exchange (NDX) — a curated catalog of infrastructure component metadata. The device/module/rack type definitions are open to the world (browse + manual YAML download); the "enrichment data" (lifecycle dates, thermal, environmental, operational, platform/NOS, observability protocol metadata) and the built-in NDX features in NetBox Cloud/Enterprise are commercial. Use when consuming enrichment data via the API, running EOL/lifecycle analyses, importing device types, or understanding how NDX data is structured.

Drive the NetBox Labs Platform MCP server (hosted on NetBox Cloud) from an AI agent. Covers connecting/auth, Code Mode (the three tools netbox_search_schema / netbox_execute / rediscover_netbox, the injected helper catalog, the sandbox contract, round-trip minimization) and Discrete per-tool mode. Use when an agent connects to the Platform MCP server, writes code-mode programs against NetBox, or chooses between code and discrete mode.