Files
triggerdotdev--trigger.dev/references
Eric Allam 5ddb81ac8d fix(cli): stop chat.agent skills silently disappearing from trigger dev (#3690)
## Summary

`trigger.dev dev` was silently dropping registered `chat.agent` skills
for any project whose task files read `process.env` at module top level
— e.g. a third-party SDK client initialized at import. The agent would
boot fine, but `skill.local()` failed at runtime with `ENOENT` because
the skill folder was never copied into `.trigger/skills/`.

## Design

The CLI ran two indexer passes in dev: the worker's own indexer (with
the full env it eventually executes tasks in), and a separate
skill-discovery indexer with only the CLI process's env. Top-level reads
of vars like `TRIGGER_API_URL` imported cleanly in the worker pass and
threw in the skill pass — the latter caught the error, warned, and
skipped skill copying. Failure was silent enough that `skill.local()`
only surfaced it at task runtime.

The skill registry is already part of the worker manifest. This PR drops
the duplicate pass and copies skill folders from that manifest after the
worker initializes. One indexer instead of two; a bad `SKILL.md` now
surfaces as a startup error instead of silently disappearing skills.

Deploy is unaffected — its skill discovery uses the project's
environment variables (fetched via the API, which fills in
`TRIGGER_API_URL` etc.), so the dev failure mode doesn't reach there.

## Test plan

- [x] New `references/agent-skills` reference project with
`skills.define` + a task that calls `skill.local()` and runs a bundled
script
- [x] On `main`, adding a top-level
`process.env.TRIGGER_API_URL!.includes(...)` read in any task file
reproduces the symptom: warning at dev startup, no `.trigger/skills/`
folder, `skill.local()` fails with ENOENT
- [x] On this branch, same project boots clean and `skill.local()` works
end-to-end
- [x] Deploy still works end-to-end with the new reference project
2026-05-21 16:30:24 +01:00
..

Trigger.dev References

Contains code that tests or uses the @trigger.dev/* packages in some way, either by using them to test out a framework adapter, an integration, or parts of the main SDK.

All the dependencies to the @trigger.dev/* packages will be both referenced in the package.json dependencies as workspace:*, as well as using a direct path from the tsconfig.json file like so:

{
  "extends": "@trigger.dev/tsconfig/node18.json",
  "include": ["./src/**/*.ts"],
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "lib": ["DOM", "DOM.Iterable"],
    "paths": {
      "@/*": ["./src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/sdk": ["../../packages/trigger-sdk/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/sdk/*": ["../../packages/trigger-sdk/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/express": ["../../packages/express/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/express/*": ["../../packages/express/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/core": ["../../packages/core/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/core/*": ["../../packages/core/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/integration-kit": ["../../packages/integration-kit/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/integration-kit/*": ["../../packages/integration-kit/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/github": ["../../integrations/github/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/github/*": ["../../integrations/github/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/slack": ["../../integrations/slack/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/slack/*": ["../../integrations/slack/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/openai": ["../../integrations/openai/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/openai/*": ["../../integrations/openai/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/resend": ["../../integrations/resend/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/resend/*": ["../../integrations/resend/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/typeform": ["../../integrations/typeform/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/typeform/*": ["../../integrations/typeform/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/plain": ["../../integrations/plain/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/plain/*": ["../../integrations/plain/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/supabase": ["../../integrations/supabase/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/supabase/*": ["../../integrations/supabase/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/stripe": ["../../integrations/stripe/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/stripe/*": ["../../integrations/stripe/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/sendgrid": ["../../integrations/sendgrid/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/sendgrid/*": ["../../integrations/sendgrid/src/*"],
      "@trigger.dev/airtable": ["../../integrations/airtable/src/index"],
      "@trigger.dev/airtable/*": ["../../integrations/airtable/src/*"]
    }
  }
}

Creating a New Reference Project

This guide assumes that you have followed the Contributing.md instructions to set up a local trigger.dev instance. If not, please complete the setup before continuing.

Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. Run an HTTP tunnel: You will need to run an HTTP tunnel to expose your local webapp, it is required for some API calls during building the image to deploy on your local instance. This is optional if you do not plan to test deployment on your local instance.
  • Download the ngrok CLI. This can be done by following the instructions on ngrok's website.
  • Create an account on ngrok to obtain the authtoken and add it to the CLI.
ngrok config add-authtoken <your-auth-token>

Replace the with the token you obtain from ngrok.

  • Run the tunnel.
ngrok http <your-app-port>

Replace the with the webapp port, default is 3030.

  1. Add your tunnel URL to the env: After running the ngrok tunnel, you will see URL in your terminal, it will look something like https://<your-tunnel-address>.ngrok-free.app. Replace the APP_ORIGIN variable with this URL in your .env file in the root of the trigger.dev project.

  2. Run the webapp on localhost:

pnpm run dev --filter webapp --filter coordinator --filter docker-provider
  1. Build the CLI in a new terminal window:
# Build the CLI
pnpm run build --filter trigger.dev

# Make it accessible to `pnpm exec`
pnpm i
  1. Set up a new project in the webapp:
  • Open the webapp running on localhost:3030.
  • Create a new project in the webapp UI.
  • Go to the Project Settings page and copy the project reference id from there.
  1. Copy the hello-world project as a template:
cp -r references/hello-world references/<new-project>

Replace <new-project> with your desired project name.

  1. Update project details:
  • Open <new-project>/package.json and change the name field. (Tip: Use the same name as in the webapp to avoid confusion.)

  • Open <new-project>/trigger.config.ts and update the project field with the project reference you copied from the webapp.

  • Run pnpm i in your <new-project> directory to sync the dependencies.

  1. Authorize the CLI for your project:
pnpm exec trigger login -a http://localhost:3030 --profile local
  1. Run the new project: You can now run your project using the CLI with the following command:
pnpm exec trigger dev --profile local

You can also deploy them against your local instance with the following command:

pnpm exec trigger deploy --self-hosted --load-image --profile local