Flowing

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Run these steps in order and retry the flaky one until the check passes
• Build a pipeline that fetches
• Then skips the upload when nothing changed
• Make sure these steps cannot be skipped

Example prompts

• “make sure these steps cannot be skipped”
• “run these independent calls at once and merge the results”
• “/flowing”

Requirements

• Python 3

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cf49d47. 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

  Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

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

• Network

  No URLs in SKILL.md.

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

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

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

Context cost

Flowing loads about 1.7k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 250 tokens; SKILL.md has 675 words of instructions outside code blocks.

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

~250

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

~1.7k

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

~3k

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); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from oaustegard/claude-skills at commit cf49d47, republished under its MIT licence (© oaustegard). 675 words, ~1,739 tokens.

name

flowing

description

Runs a multi-step procedure as a Python DAG, so ordering, branching and retries are enforced by the runner rather than described in prose a model can generate past. Use for "run these steps in order and retry the flaky one until the check passes", "build a pipeline that fetches, validates, then skips the upload when nothing changed", "make sure these steps cannot be skipped", "resume from where it broke instead of redoing the expensive early stages", "run these independent calls at once and merge the results", or any procedure of 3+ steps with branches, input contracts, or side effects that must not block the critical path. Primitives are depends_on, when=, validate=, retry_until=, detached= and journal_path=. Not for a single sequential call, for steps needing reasoning between them that no predicate captures, or for async and distributed work. To audit whether one verification check can actually go red, use gating. To fan work out across many subagents, use a dynamic workflow.

metadata.version

1.5.0

from flowing import task, Flow

@task
def fetch_data():
    return {"items": [1, 2, 3]}

@task(depends_on=[fetch_data])
def process(fetch_data):          # param name must match the dep's name
    return sum(fetch_data["items"])

@task(depends_on=[process])
def store(process):
    print(f"Result: {process}")

Flow(store).run()                 # topo-sorts, runs each layer, parallel within a layer

@task(depends_on=[fetch], when=lambda fetch: fetch["needs_processing"])
def process(fetch):
    return transform(fetch["payload"])

def must_have_items(fetch):
    if not fetch.get("items"):
        raise ValueError("fetch returned empty payload")

@task(depends_on=[fetch], validate=must_have_items)
def process(fetch):
    return sum(fetch["items"])

@task(retry=4, retry_until=lambda r: r["valid"])
def generate_until_valid():
    candidate = llm_call(...)
    return {"valid": passes_schema(candidate), "candidate": candidate}

© oaustegard, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 5 other files (scripts, references) in flowing of oaustegard/claude-skills.

• SKILL.md
• CHANGELOG.md
• README.md
• references/reference.md
• scripts/flowing.py
• tests/test_flowing.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cf49d47