Apify Actor Development

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Building a new Apify Actor from scratch
• Debugging or changing the code of an existing Actor
• Writing or updating `.actor` input and output schema files
• Pushing an Actor to the Apify platform

Example prompts

• “Create an Apify Actor that crawls product pages and saves titles and prices to a dataset.”
• “Write the input schema for my Actor so it accepts a list of start URLs and a maximum page count.”
• “My Actor fails on JavaScript-rendered pages, help me debug it and push the fix.”

Requirements

• The Apify CLI (`apify-cli`), installed with npm or Homebrew
• An Apify account, logged in with `apify login` or an `APIFY_TOKEN`

Workflow steps

9 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Create the project.
2. 2Add dependencies the template lacks, such as Crawlee or Playwright: npm install in JS/TS; in Python, a line in requirements.txt followed…
3. 3Implement in src/main.js, src/main.ts, or my_actor/main.py (Python templates are a my_actor package run as python -m my_actor), following…
4. 4Write the input schema in .actor/input_schema.json (see references/input-schema.md). Done when every input the code reads has a field with…
5. 5Write the output schemas: dataset_schema.json, output_schema.json, and key_value_store_schema.json when the code stores files. Follow…
6. 6Configure .actor/actor.json (see references/actor-json.md). Set meta.generatedBy to the tool and model in use, for example "Claude Code…
7. 7Write README.md following references/actor-readme.md. An Actor without a README is not finished.
8. 8Test locally. Put input in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json, then run apify run --user-agent…
9. 9Deploy with apify push --user-agent apify-agent-skills/apify-actor-development once the user confirms, or git push for a Git-sourced…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit f5e84aa. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • npm
  • git
  • brew
  • pip
  • uv
  • python
  • node
  • npx

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • mcp.apify.com

  Also links to:

  • docs.apify.com
  • crawlee.dev
  • console.apify.com
  • raw.githubusercontent.com

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

  • APIFY_TOKEN
  • APIFY_API_TOKEN

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Apify Actor Development loads about 2.9k tokens when it runs, and up to ~9.8k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 88 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,238 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~88

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~2.9k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~9.8k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

Without a licence we can't republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 1,238 words (~2,912 tokens).

name

apify-actor-development

Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub

Files

SKILL.md and 6 other files (references) in skills/apify-actor-development of apify/agent-skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/actor-json.md
• references/actor-readme.md
• references/input-schema.md
• references/logging.md
• references/output-schemas.md
• references/standby-mode.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit f5e84aa