Connect Apps

Use This Skill When

• User wants to send emails, messages, or notifications through Claude
• Creating issues, tasks, or tickets in external systems
• Posting to Slack, Discord, Teams, or other chat platforms
• Reading data from or writing data to Notion, Sheets, Airtable
• Executing multi-step workflows across connected apps
• Automating repetitive actions in external tools
• Integrating Claude with company's existing app ecosystem

When NOT to Use

• User wants to understand app APIs (use documentation directly)
• Composio CLI not installed or accessible
• App does not have Composio integration available
• Offline or local-only tasks without external app integration
• Simple data transformations (no external action needed)

Context: Integration Maturity

Undeveloped: Manual app interactions, copy-paste between tools, no automation.

Target: Single app connected, basic actions executable (send email, create issue).

Optimized: Multi-app workflows, parallel execution, error handling, production-grade automation.

Core Principle

Composio bridges Claude and external apps, enabling real actions—not just text generation. Authenticate once, then execute 1000+ actions across services seamlessly.

Prerequisites

1. Install Composio CLI:

   curl -fsSL https://composio.dev/install | bash
   

2. Authenticate:

   composio login
   composio whoami
   

3. Link Required Apps:

   composio link gmail
   composio link slack
   composio link github
   composio link notion
   

Instructions

Step 1: Discover Available Actions

Search for what you want to do:

composio search "send an email"
composio search "create a github issue"
composio search "post a message to slack"

List all actions for a toolkit:

composio tools list gmail
composio tools list slack
composio tools list github

Get action schema (required inputs):

composio execute GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL --get-schema
composio execute SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE --get-schema

Step 2: Prepare Action Inputs

Dry-run before executing (test without actually performing action):

composio execute GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL --dry-run -d '{
  "recipient_email": "user@example.com",
  "subject": "Test",
  "body": "Hello"
}'

Common Action Patterns:

Use Case	Action	Required Inputs
Send email	GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL	recipient_email, subject, body
Post message	SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE	channel_id, text
Create issue	GITHUB_CREATE_ISSUE	owner, repo, title, body
Create page	NOTION_CREATE_PAGE	parent_id, title, properties
Add row	AIRTABLE_CREATE_RECORDS	base_id, table_id, fields

Step 3: Execute Single Action

Basic execution:

composio execute GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL -d '{
  "recipient_email": "user@example.com",
  "subject": "From Claude",
  "body": "This email was sent by Claude through Composio!"
}'

With error handling:

composio execute SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE -d '{
  "channel_id": "C123456",
  "text": "Deployment complete"
}' && echo "Message sent!" || echo "Failed"

Step 4: Execute Multiple Actions (Parallel)

Run multiple actions simultaneously:

composio execute --parallel \
  GMAIL_FETCH_EMAILS -d '{"max_results": 5}' \
  SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE -d '{"channel_id": "C123", "text": "Started"}' \
  GITHUB_GET_THE_AUTHENTICATED_USER -d '{}'

Step 5: Build Multi-Step Workflows

Create a workflow script (JavaScript/TypeScript):

composio run '
  // Step 1: Create GitHub issue
  const issue = await execute("GITHUB_CREATE_ISSUE", {
    owner: "acme",
    repo: "app",
    title: "Deploy to production",
    body: "Automated deployment"
  });
  
  // Step 2: Send Slack notification
  await execute("SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE", {
    channel_id: "C123",
    text: `Issue created: ${issue.html_url}`
  });
  
  // Step 3: Add to Notion
  await execute("NOTION_CREATE_PAGE", {
    parent_id: "parent-123",
    title: `Deploy Ticket #${issue.number}`,
    properties: { url: { url: issue.html_url } }
  });
  
  console.log("Workflow complete");
'

Step 6: Handle Configuration

Environment Variables:

export COMPOSIO_API_KEY="your-key"              # For CI/CD
export COMPOSIO_BASE_URL="https://custom-url"   # Custom endpoint
export COMPOSIO_SESSION_DIR="/custom/path"      # Custom storage
export COMPOSIO_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true         # Privacy opt-out

Global Logging:

composio --log-level debug execute GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL -d '{...}'
composio --log-level info tools list gmail

Supported Services

Email: Gmail, Outlook, SendGrid, Mailgun, Brevo Chat: Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Twilio Development: GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Linear, Bitbucket Documents: Notion, Google Docs, Confluence, OneNote Data: Google Sheets, Airtable, Postgres, MySQL 1000+ more: Check Composio platform

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
"Not logged in"	composio login and follow browser auth
"Connection required for <toolkit>"	composio link <toolkit> to authenticate
"Unknown action slug"	composio search "<goal>" to find right action
"Bad inputs / validation error"	composio execute <SLUG> --get-schema to see required fields
"Action failed / permission denied"	Check permissions in the target app (Gmail, Slack, etc.)
"CLI not found"	Reinstall: curl -fsSL https://composio.dev/install | bash

Advanced Patterns

Retry on failure:

for i in {1..3}; do
  composio execute SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE -d '{"channel_id":"C123","text":"msg"}' && break
  sleep 5
done

Pipe data between actions:

EMAILS=$(composio execute GMAIL_FETCH_EMAILS -d '{"max_results":1}')
composio execute SLACK_SEND_MESSAGE -d '{"channel_id":"C123","text":"'"${EMAILS}"'"}'

Raw API proxy (when no dedicated tool exists):

composio proxy https://api.service.com/v1/endpoint --toolkit google_docs

Output

Provide:

1. Connected Apps Confirmation

   • List of successfully linked apps
   • Authentication status per app

2. Action Inventory

   • Available actions with full names (e.g., GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL)
   • Required inputs for each action
   • Example payloads

3. Workflow Examples

   • Single-action examples (email, message, issue)
   • Multi-step workflows (3+ coordinated actions)
   • Error handling patterns

4. Integration Ready Checklist

   • CLI installed ✓
   • Authentication complete ✓
   • Apps linked ✓
   • Dry-run successful ✓