Toolbox Skills

These skill specifications target contributors working on the Power Platform ToolBox host application — the Electron shell that loads and runs tools — as distinct from the tool-development skills that help build tools that run inside it. Each skill automates a step in the contributor workflow: getting a fork running locally, extending the host's main-process capabilities, or producing a distributable build.

Skill	Description
setup-toolbox-dev-env	Forks and clones the ToolBox host repo, installs prerequisites, runs pnpm install, and launches the Electron app in development mode with pnpm run dev.
add-host-manager	Scaffolds a new main-process manager (following the existing settings/connections/tool-lifecycle/auth pattern) that communicates with the renderer only through toolboxAPI / toolboxAPIBridge.js.
package-toolbox	Runs lint, type-check, and build steps, then produces a platform-specific packaged build (e.g. pnpm run package:win) from the three Vite bundles.

How these skills fit together

A contributor typically runs setup-toolbox-dev-env once, to get pnpm run dev working locally. From there, add-host-manager is used whenever a change needs new main-process capability — a new domain of state or a new OS-level integration — kept properly isolated behind the API layer rather than exposed directly to tool iframes. Once a change is ready, package-toolbox verifies the lint/build/package pipeline still produces clean main, preload, and renderer bundles before the change goes into a pull request targeting the dev branch.

Related

• ToolBox Development — the reference these skills are built on
• Tool Skills — the companion catalog for building tools that run inside the toolbox, rather than the toolbox itself