Agent skill

Spatial Communication

by TianGzlab in TianGzlab/OmicsClaw

Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with obs[celltypekey] (default leiden) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R).

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Spatial Communication

skills CLI
$ npx skills add TianGzlab/OmicsClaw --skill spatial-communication -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install TianGzlab/OmicsClaw spatial-communication --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TianGzlab/OmicsClaw.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/spatial/spatial-communication .claude/skills/spatial-communication && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
spatial-communication
GitHub stars
161
Token cost
~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length
391 words
Files
9 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
95
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with obs[celltypekey] (default leiden) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R).

  • Works in 6 steps: Load AnnData, validate… → Sync obsm["spatial"] ↔ obsm["X_spatial"]… → Dispatch to chosen backend (LIANA /… → …
  • Tasks that involve Bioinformatics
  • SKILL.md covers When to use, Inputs & Outputs, Flow and Gotchas, plus 2 more sections
  • Runs Python and R scripts from its folder; calls python

What it does

Spatial Communication is an agent skill from TianGzlab/OmicsClaw. Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with obs[celltypekey] (default leiden) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R). Skip when running scRNA-only L-R inference (use sc-cell-communication); no cell-type labels exist (use spatial-annotate).

Its SKILL.md is about 1.6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 11 other files, including reference files (for example `r_visualization/README.md`, `references/methodology.md` and `references/output_contract.md`).

It sits in Research & Science, covering Bioinformatics. It works with AnnData. The repository describes itself as: Conversational & memory-enabled AI research partner for multi-omics analysis. CLI + Desktop App (installers in Releases). From biological idea to full research paper. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Bioinformatics

Example prompts

  • “/spatial-communication”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

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

  1. Load AnnData, validate obs[cell_type_key] exists with ≥ 2 categories (_lib/communication.py:764-765).
  2. Sync obsm["spatial"] ↔ obsm["X_spatial"] (spatial_communication.py:79-81); cast cell-type column to Categorical.
  3. Dispatch to chosen backend (LIANA / CellPhoneDB / FastCCC / CellChat-R).
  4. Write canonical L-R results to uns["ccc_results"] + per-method uns[METHOD_RESULT_KEYS[method]] (_lib/communication.py:735-739).
  5. Compute pathway-level summary, signaling roles, source-target summary.
  6. Save tables + processed.h5ad + report.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 6fbd79f. 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 script files (Python and R), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • python

    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

Spatial Communication loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs, and up to ~5.6k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 86 tokens; SKILL.md has 391 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~86
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.6k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~5.6k

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

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

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 TianGzlab/OmicsClaw at commit 6fbd79f, republished under its MIT licence (© TianGzlab). 391 words, ~1,641 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/spatial-communication/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 8 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
spatial-communication
description
Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with `obs[cell_type_key]` (default `leiden`) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R). Skip when running scRNA-only L-R inference (use sc-cell-communication); no cell-type labels exist (use spatial-annotate).
version
0.5.0
author
OmicsClaw
license
MIT
emoji
📡
tags
spatial, communication, ligand-receptor, liana, cellphonedb, cellchat, fastccc
requires
anndata, cellphonedb, fastccc, liana, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, scanpy, scipy, seaborn

spatial-communication

When to use

The user has a preprocessed spatial AnnData with cell-type labels (obs[cell_type_key], default leiden) and wants ligand-receptor cell-cell communication scored. Four backends:

  • liana (default) — LIANA consensus across multiple L-R methods. Tunables --liana-expr-prop, --liana-min-cells, --liana-n-perms.
  • cellphonedb — Permutation test with mean expression statistic. Tunables --cellphonedb-iterations, --cellphonedb-threshold.
  • fastccc — Fast permutation-free percentile-based score. Tunables --fastccc-min-percentile.
  • cellchat_r — CellChat (R) via rpy2 interop. Tunables --cellchat-min-cells, --cellchat-prob-type.

Species: --species human (default) or mouse. For non-spatial L-R use sc-cell-communication; for pathway scoring use spatial-enrichment.

Inputs & Outputs

<!-- AUTO-GENERATED from skill.yaml (interface) — do not edit by hand. Regenerate: python scripts/generate_skill_md.py <skill_dir> -->

Inputs

  • File types: .h5ad
  • Requires a preprocessed AnnData (X normalised, PCA/neighbours present)
  • Expects obsm: spatial

Outputs

  • tables/cellchat_centrality.csv
  • tables/cellchat_count_matrix.csv
  • tables/cellchat_pathways.csv
  • tables/cellchat_results.csv
  • tables/cellchat_weight_matrix.csv
  • tables/communication_run_summary.csv
  • tables/communication_spatial_points.csv
  • tables/communication_summary.csv
  • tables/communication_umap_points.csv
  • tables/complex_composition_table.csv
  • tables/complex_table.csv
  • tables/gene_table.csv
  • tables/interaction_table.csv
  • tables/lr_interactions.csv
  • tables/meta.tsv
  • tables/protein_table.csv
  • tables/signaling_roles.csv
  • tables/source_target_summary.csv
  • tables/top_interactions.csv
  • figures/communication_pvalue_distribution.png
  • figures/communication_roles_spatial.png
  • figures/communication_score_vs_significance.png
  • figures/lr_dotplot.png
  • figures/lr_heatmap.png
  • figures/lr_spatial.png
  • figures/signaling_roles.png
  • figures/source_target_summary.png
  • fastccc_input.h5ad
  • input.h5ad
  • processed.h5ad
  • report.md
  • result.json
  • Processed AnnData (saves_h5ad) — adds uns: ccc_results, liana_results, cellphonedb_results, fastccc_results, cellchat_results, communication_summary, communication_signaling_roles, spatial_communication

Flow

  1. Load AnnData, validate obs[cell_type_key] exists with ≥ 2 categories (_lib/communication.py:764-765).
  2. Sync obsm["spatial"] ↔ obsm["X_spatial"] (spatial_communication.py:79-81); cast cell-type column to Categorical.
  3. Dispatch to chosen backend (LIANA / CellPhoneDB / FastCCC / CellChat-R).
  4. Write canonical L-R results to uns["ccc_results"] + per-method uns[METHOD_RESULT_KEYS[method]] (_lib/communication.py:735-739).
  5. Compute pathway-level summary, signaling roles, source-target summary.
  6. Save tables + processed.h5ad + report.
Show full SKILL.md (196 more words)Show less

Gotchas

  • obs[cell_type_key] is REQUIRED — no auto-fallback. _lib/communication.py:764-765 raises ValueError when the column is missing. Run spatial-annotate or spatial-domains first.
  • Default cell-type column is leiden, not cell_type. spatial_communication.py:1065 defaults --cell-type-key to "leiden". If your AnnData uses cell_type, pass --cell-type-key cell_type explicitly.
  • CellChat backend needs an R install with CellChat. --method cellchat_r invokes R via rpy2. Install CellChat in your R environment first; missing R / rpy2 / CellChat surfaces as a runtime error inside the dispatch step (not at parser.error), so the failure happens after argument parsing succeeds.
  • FastCCC --fastccc-min-percentile must be in [0, 1]. spatial_communication.py:985 rejects values outside that range with parser.error.
  • Output uns keys are unconditionally written, even with 0 interactions. _lib/communication.py:735-739 writes empty uns["ccc_results"] / uns["communication_summary"] if no L-R pairs pass thresholds — distinguish "no signal" from "method failed" by inspecting tables/communication_run_summary.csv.
  • Per-method copy uses METHOD_RESULT_KEYS mapping. _lib/communication.py:68-73 maps liana → uns["liana_results"], cellphonedb → uns["cellphonedb_results"], fastccc → uns["fastccc_results"], cellchat_r → uns["cellchat_results"]. Downstream readers should prefer uns["ccc_results"] for portability.

Key CLI

bash
# Demo
python omicsclaw.py run spatial-communication --demo --output /tmp/comm_demo

# LIANA consensus (default)
python omicsclaw.py run spatial-communication \
  --input preprocessed.h5ad --output results/ \
  --method liana --species human --cell-type-key cell_type \
  --liana-expr-prop 0.1 --liana-min-cells 5 --liana-n-perms 1000

# CellPhoneDB permutation test
python omicsclaw.py run spatial-communication \
  --input preprocessed.h5ad --output results/ \
  --method cellphonedb --cellphonedb-iterations 1000 --cellphonedb-threshold 0.1

# CellChat (R via rpy2)
python omicsclaw.py run spatial-communication \
  --input preprocessed.h5ad --output results/ \
  --method cellchat_r --species mouse \
  --cellchat-min-cells 10 --cellchat-prob-type triMean

See also

  • references/parameters.md — every CLI flag, per-method tunables
  • references/methodology.md — when each backend wins
  • references/output_contract.md — uns["ccc_results"] schema + per-method copies
  • Adjacent skills: spatial-annotate (upstream — provides obs[cell_type_key]), spatial-domains (upstream alternative — Leiden domains), sc-cell-communication (parallel — non-spatial L-R), spatial-condition (parallel — DE between conditions), spatial-enrichment (parallel — pathway scoring)

© TianGzlab, 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 8 other files (references) in skills/spatial/spatial-communication of TianGzlab/OmicsClaw.

  • SKILL.md
  • r_visualization/README.md
  • r_visualization/communication_publication_template.R
  • references/methodology.md
  • references/output_contract.md
  • references/parameters.md
  • skill.yaml
  • spatial_communication.py
  • tests/test_spatial_communication.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 6fbd79f

Compare with similar skills

Spatial Communication next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Spatial Communication compared with similar skills
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Single-Cell Initial AnalysisLigphiDonk/Oh-my--paper7381 repos~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Works with

Questions about Spatial Communication

What does Spatial Communication do?

Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with obs[celltypekey] (default leiden) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R). Spatial Communication is an agent skill from TianGzlab/OmicsClaw. Load when computing ligand-receptor cell-cell communication on a preprocessed spatial AnnData with obs[celltypekey] (default leiden) via LIANA (default), CellPhoneDB, FastCCC, or CellChat (R).

When should I use Spatial Communication?

Spatial Communication fits situations like: tasks that involve Bioinformatics.

How do I install Spatial Communication in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add TianGzlab/OmicsClaw --skill spatial-communication -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/spatial/spatial-communication in TianGzlab/OmicsClaw) into .claude/skills/spatial-communication in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Spatial Communication in Codex?

Run `npx skills add TianGzlab/OmicsClaw --skill spatial-communication -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/spatial/spatial-communication in TianGzlab/OmicsClaw) into .agents/skills/spatial-communication in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Spatial Communication in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add TianGzlab/OmicsClaw --skill spatial-communication -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/spatial-communication, .gemini/skills/spatial-communication, .github/skills/spatial-communication and .opencode/skills/spatial-communication in your project.

What does Spatial Communication need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Spatial Communication needs Python and R for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (python). Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Spatial Communication access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Spatial Communication safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Spatial Communication use?

Spatial Communication is published under the MIT licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Spatial Communication use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 4k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Spatial Communication?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Spatial Communication: Scanpy Single-Cell Analysis (davila7/claude-code-templates, 32k stars), Scgpt (JimLiu/science-skills, 227 stars), PyDESeq2 Differential Expression (davila7/claude-code-templates, 32k stars) and Anndata (davila7/claude-code-templates, 32k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Spatial Communication?

TianGzlab (a GitHub organization) maintains it in TianGzlab/OmicsClaw, which has 161 GitHub stars. The repository holds 95 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on July 28, 2026.

Source: TianGzlab/OmicsClaw on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.