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API Reference

Agent Skills

Agent Skills are Claude Code plugins that Runbear publishes so you can drive Runbear from your terminal. The headline skill, runbear:deploy, takes a local Claude Code project — its CLAUDE.md, skills, subagents, docs, and code — and deploys the whole thing to a hosted Runbear Claude Agent SDK agent. From there you connect the agent to Slack and chat with your project as a teammate.

This is the counterpart to the MCP Server: the MCP server lets a client manage your agents; the deploy skill ships your local project into one.

Requires the Runbear MCP server

runbear:deploy runs the deploy through the Runbear MCP server, so that server must be connected in your Claude Code session first. The skill uses the create_project_upload and finalize_project_upload tools; if they aren't available, connect the MCP server and try again.

Install

In Claude Code, add the Runbear marketplace and install the runbear plugin:

/plugin marketplace add runbear-io/skills
/plugin install runbear@runbear-skills

This registers the /runbear:deploy command. You'll also need the Runbear MCP server connected — see MCP Server → Connect:

claude mcp add --transport http runbear https://api.runbear.io/mcp

Local tools

The deploy script shells out to git, zip, and curl, so make sure those are on your PATH.

Deploy your project to Slack

1. Deploy the project to a new agent

From your project directory, create a fresh Claude Agent SDK agent and deploy to it in one step:

/runbear:deploy --new "My Project"

The skill creates the agent, packs and uploads your files, and finalizes the deploy. On success it reports the file count and a link to the new agent's setup page in the Runbear dashboard.

To deploy into an existing agent instead, pass its app UUID, agent URL, or agent name as the first argument:

/runbear:deploy <appId>
/runbear:deploy https://app.runbear.io/agents/<appId>
/runbear:deploy "My Project"

A name is fuzzy-matched against your agents. If more than one agent matches — or several share the same name — the skill lists the matches with their app IDs so you can pick the right one instead of guessing.

Agent type

The target must be a Claude Agent SDK agent (that's what --new creates). Other agent types are rejected with agent_must_be_claude_agent_sdk.

2. Connect the agent to Slack

Once your project is in the agent's workspace, bring it to Slack. From the same Claude Code session you can ask the Runbear MCP server to do it — it exposes get_slack_install_link, deploy_to_slack, and join_slack_channels (see MCP Server → Slack):

Deploy the "My Project" agent to our Slack workspace and join #project-team.

Or wire it up from the dashboard the same way you would any other agent — see Adding Channels.

3. Chat with it

Mention the agent in Slack. On its next activation the Agent SDK loads the files you deployed, so it runs against the same CLAUDE.md, skills, and code you have locally.

Options

ArgumentPurpose
<target>Deploy to an existing agent, as the first positional argument — an app UUID, agent URL, or agent name (fuzzy-matched, with an interactive picker when more than one matches)
--new "<name>"Create a new Claude Agent SDK agent named <name> and deploy to it
--cwd <path>Project folder to deploy (defaults to the current directory)
--overwriteReplace files that already exist in the agent workspace
/runbear:deploy --new "My Project" --cwd ./services/api
/runbear:deploy "My Project" --cwd ./services/api --overwrite

What gets deployed

The skill sends the files that git tracks (or would track — it honors .gitignore), minus anything sensitive. Both the local packing step and the server re-validation block:

  • Secrets and env files.env / .env.*, and any file containing API keys, tokens, private keys, bearer tokens, or database URLs with real inline credentials.
  • Credential and agent config.mcp.json, .claude/settings.json, .claude/settings.local.json, .claude.json.
  • Build and dependency output.git/, node_modules/, dist/, build/, .next/, .turbo/, coverage/, .venv/, vendor/, __pycache__/, and similar.

A deploy is capped at 500 files, 25 MiB decompressed, and a 50 MiB archive. If your project is larger, deploy a focused subset with --cwd.

Never paste secrets into chat

The skill deliberately leaves secrets out of the upload, and you should never paste credentials into the conversation. When an integration needs a secret, set it up in the dashboard at https://app.runbear.io/agents/<agentId>/integrations, where credentials are stored in the vault and masked.