Your AI coding agent can write React components and debug Python — but can it send an email? Read a calendar? Look up a contact?
If you're building apps that touch email, calendar, or contacts, the answer matters. Until now, wiring up those integrations meant hand-rolling API calls, managing OAuth flows, and hoping your agent doesn't hallucinate a curl command that deletes your inbox.
Nylas Skills fixes this. It's an open-source skill pack that teaches AI coding agents how to build with the Nylas platform — covering email, calendar, and contacts across Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo, iCloud, and IMAP providers.
What Are Agent Skills?
Skills are structured knowledge files that AI coding agents load at session start. Think of them as expert cheat sheets — they tell your agent what APIs exist, what flags to use, what patterns to follow, and where to find the latest docs.
Unlike fine-tuning or custom training, skills work with the agents you already use: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Copilot, and dozens of others that support the skills.sh spec.
What's in the Box
The nylas/skills repo ships two skills:
nylas-api
Everything your agent needs to build Nylas v3 API integrations:
Authentication — 6 methods including OAuth, API keys, and service accounts
Email — messages, threads, drafts, tracking, smart compose, templates, transactional send
Calendar — events, availability, recurring events, conferencing
Contacts — full CRUD with provider-specific field mapping
Webhooks & Pub/Sub — real-time event delivery
Scheduler — 70+ UI components for booking flows
Notetaker — meeting recording, transcription, AI summaries
SDKs — Node.js, Python, Ruby, Kotlin coverage
nylas-cli
Terminal-first workflows for managing email, calendar, and contacts:
- Setup, auth, and configuration
- Email operations — read, send, search, AI-powered compose
- Calendar management — events, RSVP, AI scheduling
- MCP server install for Claude Code and Cursor
- AI chat integration with Claude, Codex, and Ollama
- Audit logging for compliance
Install in 30 Seconds
Using the Skills CLI
# Install all Nylas skills
npx skills add nylas/skills
# Or pick one
npx skills add nylas/skills --skill nylas-api
npx skills add nylas/skills --skill nylas-cli
Claude Code Plugin
/plugin marketplace add nylas/skills
That's it. Open a new session and your agent knows how to work with Nylas.
How It Works in Practice
Say you're building a feature that sends a welcome email when a user signs up. Without skills, your agent guesses at the API shape, hallucinates endpoints, or asks you to paste documentation.
With Nylas Skills installed, your agent already knows:
- The exact endpoint and payload structure for
POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/messages/send
- Which authentication method to use for your setup
- How to handle attachments, tracking, and error codes
- Where to find the current docs if something's changed
The skills link to fetchable doc pages on developer.nylas.com — so your agent can pull the latest details rather than relying on stale training data.
Why This Matters
AI coding agents are only as good as the context you give them. Most agents have zero knowledge of platform-specific APIs like Nylas. Skills bridge that gap without requiring you to copy-paste docs into every chat session.
The result: fewer hallucinated API calls, less back-and-forth, and integrations that work on the first try.
Get Started
Repo: github.com/nylas/skills
Nylas API docs: developer.nylas.com
Nylas CLI docs: cli.nylas.com
Skills spec: skills.sh
The repo is MIT licensed. PRs and issues welcome.
Have you tried agent skills in your workflow? Drop a comment — I'd like to hear what integrations you'd want your coding agent to handle out of the box.
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