Oban

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Debugging Oban jobs
• Even for a how-to question: workers
• Pro Workflow/Batch

Example prompts

• “/oban”

Workflow steps

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

1. 1JOBS MUST BE IDEMPOTENT — Safe to retry. Use idempotency keys for payments
2. 2JOBS MUST STORE IDs, NOT STRUCTS — JSON serialization. %{user_id: 1} not %{user: %User{}}
3. 3JOBS MUST HANDLE ALL RETURN VALUES — :ok, {:error, _}, {:cancel, _}, {:snooze, _}
4. 4ARGS USE STRING KEYS — Pattern match %{"user_id" => id} not %{user_id: id}
5. 5UNIQUE CONSTRAINTS FOR USER ACTIONS — Prevent double-click duplicates
6. 6NEVER STORE LARGE DATA IN ARGS — Store references (IDs, paths), not content
7. 7SMART ENGINE: NEVER USE attempt TO LIMIT SNOOZES — Snooze rolls back attempt counter. Use meta["snoozed"] instead. Causes infinite loops

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 9767a82. 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

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are elixir and bash).

  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

Oban loads about 980 tokens when it runs, and up to ~5.7k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 54 tokens; SKILL.md has 315 words of instructions outside code blocks.

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

~54

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

~980

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

~5.7k

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

The full file from oliver-kriska/claude-elixir-phoenix at commit 9767a82, republished under its MIT licence (© oliver-kriska). 315 words, ~980 tokens.

name

oban

description

Use when writing, scheduling, testing or debugging Oban jobs, even for a how-to question: workers, cron, retries, unique jobs, queues, Pro Workflow/Batch. Load it before touching job code; it holds the job rules.

grep -E "oban_pro|oban_web" mix.exs
grep -r "use Oban.Pro.Worker" lib/
grep -r "Oban.Pro.Engines.Smart" config/

defmodule MyApp.Workers.ExampleWorker do
  use Oban.Worker,
    queue: :default,
    max_attempts: 5,
    unique: [period: {5, :minutes}, keys: [:entity_id]]

  @impl Oban.Worker
  def perform(%Oban.Job{args: %{"entity_id" => id}}) do
    case process(id) do
      {:ok, _} -> :ok
      {:error, :not_found} -> {:cancel, "Entity not found"}
      {:error, :rate_limited} -> {:snooze, {5, :minutes}}
      {:error, reason} -> {:error, reason}
    end
  end
end

use Oban.Testing, repo: MyApp.Repo

# Assert enqueued
assert_enqueued worker: MyApp.Worker, args: %{id: 1}

# Execute and verify
assert :ok = perform_job(MyApp.Worker, %{id: 1})

© oliver-kriska, 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 4 other files (references) in targets/pi/skills/oban of oliver-kriska/claude-elixir-phoenix.

• SKILL.md
• references/oban-pro-basics.md
• references/queue-config.md
• references/testing-patterns.md
• references/worker-patterns.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 9767a82