brigade

Author HTML compositions that the `render_video` tool turns into deterministic MP4 video — animated charts and dashboards, data explainers, text/quote cards, kinetic typography, product teasers, and branded short-form social clips. Use when the user asks Brigade to make, render, animate, or produce a video from data, text, or a layout (NOT photoreal/AI footage — that's `generate_video`).

Create and edit Microsoft Word (.docx) documents to a professional standard — reports, proposals, contracts, letters, memos — with custom styles, multi-level lists, styled/merged tables, headers/footers, table of contents, hyperlinks, footnotes, tracked changes and comments. Use when the user asks Brigade to make, write, draft, fill, redline, or edit a Word document or .docx file.

Create and edit PDFs to a professional standard — generate from content, draw vector/precise layouts, embed custom (incl. CJK/Unicode) fonts, CREATE and fill AcroForm fields (text/checkbox/radio/dropdown), flatten, merge/split/rotate, stamp/watermark, encrypt, and extract text. Use when the user asks Brigade to make a PDF, fill or build a PDF form, or combine/split/stamp/secure PDFs.

Build and edit professional Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets, workbooks, and simple financial models — live formulas, number/date/currency formats, cell styling, conditional formatting, data-validation dropdowns, named ranges, frozen panes, merged cells, multi-sheet. Use when the user asks Brigade to make, fill, update, model, or edit a spreadsheet, workbook, or .xlsx file.

Delegate coding tasks to Codex, Claude Code, or Pi agents via background process. Use when: (1) building/creating new features or apps, (2) reviewing PRs (spawn in temp dir), (3) refactoring large codebases, (4) iterative coding that needs file exploration. NOT for: simple one-liner fixes (just edit), reading code (use read tool), thread-bound ACP harness requests in chat (for example spawn/run Codex or Claude Code in a Discord thread; use sessions_spawn with runtime:"acp"), or any work in ~/brigade workspace (never spawn agents here). Claude Code: use --print --permission-mode bypassPermissions (no PTY). Codex/Pi/OpenCode: pty:true required.

How to find and VERIFY business leads (any niche, any city) — especially "businesses without a website" prospecting. Decides "no website" by SEARCHING the business name, not by a map button. Use whenever the user asks to find businesses, shops, vendors, professionals, or sales leads in a location. No API key needed — web_search + the browser do everything.

Connect an OAuth 2.0 service (Gmail, Google APIs, etc.) using the built-in oauth_authorize tool — get a click-to-authorize link, auto-capture the code, and seal the tokens. Use whenever the operator asks to connect Gmail / a Google API / any OAuth account.

Display HTML content — games, visualizations, dashboards, generated HTML, interactive demos — on a connected canvas-capable display surface. Use when you need to present visual or interactive web content on a screen.

Fetch GitHub issues, spawn sub-agents to implement fixes and open PRs, then monitor and address PR review comments. Usage: /gh-issues [owner/repo] [--label bug] [--limit 5] [--milestone v1.0] [--assignee @me] [--fork user/repo] [--watch] [--interval 5] [--reviews-only] [--cron] [--dry-run] [--model glm-5] [--notify-channel -1002381931352]

Use when you need to send or manage iMessages via BlueBubbles (recommended iMessage integration). Calls go through the generic message tool with channel="bluebubbles".

Discord ops via the message tool (channel=discord).

Host security hardening and risk-tolerance configuration for Brigade deployments. Use when a user asks for security audits, firewall/SSH/update hardening, risk posture, exposure review, Brigade cron scheduling for periodic checks, or version status checks on a machine running Brigade (laptop, workstation, Pi, VPS).

Use CodexBar CLI local cost usage to summarize per-model usage for Codex or Claude, including the current (most recent) model or a full model breakdown. Trigger when asked for model-level usage/cost data from codexbar, or when you need a scriptable per-model summary from codexbar cost JSON.

Diagnose Brigade node connection and pairing failures for Android, iOS, and macOS companion apps. Use when QR/setup code/manual connect fails, local Wi-Fi works but VPS/tailnet does not, or errors mention pairing required, unauthorized, bootstrap token invalid or expired, gateway.bind, gateway.remote.url, Tailscale, or plugins.entries.device-pair.config.publicUrl.

Use when you need to control Slack from Brigade via the slack tool, including reacting to messages or pinning/unpinning items in Slack channels or DMs.

Example TaskFlow authoring pattern for inbox triage. Use when messages need different treatment based on intent, with some routes notifying immediately, some waiting on outside answers, and others rolling into a later summary.

Use when work should span one or more detached tasks but still behave like one job with a single owner context. TaskFlow is the durable flow substrate under authoring layers like Lobster, ACPX, plugins, or plain code. Keep conditional logic in the caller; use TaskFlow for flow identity, child-task linkage, waiting state, revision-checked mutations, and user-facing emergence.

Start voice calls via the Brigade voice-call plugin.

Use the mcporter CLI to list, configure, auth, and call MCP servers/tools directly (HTTP or stdio), including ad-hoc servers, config edits, and CLI/type generation.

Edit PDFs with natural-language instructions using the nano-pdf CLI.

Notion API for creating and managing pages, databases, and blocks.

Work with Obsidian vaults (plain Markdown notes) and automate via obsidian-cli.

Transcribe audio via OpenAI Audio Transcriptions API (Whisper).

Local speech-to-text with the Whisper CLI (no API key).

Control Philips Hue lights and scenes via the OpenHue CLI.

Best practices for using the oracle CLI (prompt + file bundling, engines, sessions, and file attachment patterns).

Foodora-only CLI for checking past orders and active order status (Deliveroo WIP).

Capture and automate macOS UI with the Peekaboo CLI.

ElevenLabs text-to-speech with mac-style say UX.

Search and analyze your own session logs (older/parent conversations) using jq.

Use when you need to author, package, or share a skill folder — understanding the SKILL.md format, where skills live, and how to bundle a folder so it can be shared with others.

Local text-to-speech via sherpa-onnx (offline, no cloud)

Create, edit, improve, or audit AgentSkills. Use when creating a new skill from scratch or when asked to improve, review, audit, tidy up, or clean up an existing skill or SKILL.md file. Also use when editing or restructuring a skill directory (moving files to references/ or scripts/, removing stale content, validating against the AgentSkills spec). Triggers on phrases like "create a skill", "author a skill", "tidy up a skill", "improve this skill", "review the skill", "clean up the skill", "audit the skill".

Generate spectrograms and feature-panel visualizations from audio with the songsee CLI.

Control Sonos speakers (discover/status/play/volume/group).

Terminal Spotify playback/search via spogo (preferred) or spotify_player.

Summarize or extract text/transcripts from URLs, podcasts, and local files (great fallback for “transcribe this YouTube/video”).

Manage Things 3 via the `things` CLI on macOS (add/update projects+todos via URL scheme; read/search/list from the local Things database). Use when a user asks Brigade to add a task to Things, list inbox/today/upcoming, search tasks, or inspect projects/areas/tags.

Remote-control tmux sessions for interactive CLIs by sending keystrokes and scraping pane output.

Manage Trello boards, lists, and cards via the Trello REST API.