A curated library of reusable development skills, patterns, and best practices for building plugins and tools within the Power Platform Toolbox (PPTB) ecosystem — covering plugin architecture, Dataverse integration, PCF controls, rule-engine design, and Azure-hosted backends.
Skills are markdown files that give AI agents specialized knowledge and workflows for specific tasks. When you add these to your project, your agent can recognize when you're working on a marketing task and apply the right frameworks and best practices.
PPTB has two distinct audiences, and every skill belongs to one of them: tool-development skills help build an individual tool that runs inside the ToolBox host and talks to Dataverse/Power Platform through injected APIs; toolbox-development skills help build the ToolBox host application itself — the Electron shell and its main/renderer processes. The two groups are independent of each other, aimed at different codebases and different contributors.
graph TD
ToolDev(["tool-development<br/>build a tool that runs inside ToolBox"])
BoxDev(["toolbox-development<br/>build the ToolBox host app itself"])
ToolDev --> Scaffold[Scaffold]
ToolDev --> ApiInt["API Integration"]
ToolDev --> Config[Configuration]
ToolDev --> Harden[Hardening]
ToolDev --> Ext[Extensibility]
ToolDev --> Release1[Release]
Scaffold --> s1["create-pptb-tool"]
ApiInt --> s2["add-toolbox-api"]
ApiInt --> s3["add-dataverse-api"]
ApiInt --> s4["add-powerplatform-api"]
ApiInt --> s11["add-file-system-api"]
ApiInt --> s12["add-events-api"]
ApiInt --> s13["add-settings-api"]
Config --> s5["configure-csp"]
Harden --> s6["add-error-handling"]
Ext --> s7["add-inter-tool-invocation"]
Ext --> s8["add-agent-integration"]
Release1 --> s9["validate-pptb-tool"]
Release1 --> s10["publish-pptb-tool"]
BoxDev --> Env[Environment]
BoxDev --> HostCap["Host Capability"]
BoxDev --> Release2[Release]
Env --> t1["setup-toolbox-dev-env"]
HostCap --> t2["add-host-manager"]
Release2 --> t3["package-toolbox"]
classDef root fill:#4f46e5,color:#fff,stroke:#333,stroke-width:1px;
class ToolDev,BoxDev root;
A typical tool build starts with create-pptb-tool, layers in whichever API skills the tool's functionality needs, adds configure-csp if any of those reach an external domain, wraps the result with add-error-handling, adds add-inter-tool-invocation/add-agent-integration for cross-tool or AI-assistant behavior, then closes out with validate-pptb-tool and publish-pptb-tool. A toolbox contributor runs setup-toolbox-dev-env once, reaches for add-host-manager whenever a change needs new main-process capability, and finishes with package-toolbox before opening a PR.
Skills cross-reference each other within a group — add-toolbox-api ↔ add-dataverse-api ↔ add-powerplatform-api ↔ add-error-handling ↔ add-inter-tool-invocation. See each skill's own SKILL.md for its "Next steps"/"Related" links.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
| tool-development | Entry point for building a PPTB tool — a web app that runs inside the Power Platform ToolBox host and talks to Dataverse/Power Platform through injected APIs. Routes to the specific skill a request needs. |
| create-pptb-tool | Scaffolds a new Power Platform ToolBox (PPTB) tool — runs the yo pptb generator (or a manual fallback), writes a compliant package.json manifest, installs @pptb/types, and wires a minimal... |
| add-toolbox-api | Wires up window.toolboxAPI calls — connections, utils (notifications, clipboard, theme, parallel execution, browser open), terminal sessions, inter-tool invocation, and tool context. |
| add-dataverse-api | Wires up window.dataverseAPI calls — CRUD, relationship associations, FetchXML/OData queries, entity/attribute/relationship/option-set metadata and schema writes, actions, and solution deployment. |
| add-powerplatform-api | Wires up window.powerplatformAPI namespace calls (environment management, governance, licensing, analytics, etc.) and the Entra app registration prerequisites they depend on. |
| add-error-handling | Wraps a tool's toolboxAPI/dataverseAPI/powerplatformAPI/file-system calls in try/catch, with contextual logging, user-facing notifications, and retry logic for transient failures. |
| add-file-system-api | Wires up toolboxAPI.fileSystem calls — reading/writing text and binary files, checking existence, listing directories, and native save/select dialogs. |
| add-events-api | Wires up toolboxAPI.events.on() so a tool reacts to platform events — connection changes, settings updates, notifications, terminal activity, tool lifecycle — instead of polling. |
| add-settings-api | Wires up toolboxAPI.settings calls (get/set/getAll/setAll) so a tool persists user preferences across sessions. |
| configure-csp | Adds and scopes cspExceptions entries in the manifest for external domains a tool needs to reach — CDN scripts, external APIs, webfonts, embedded frames. |
| add-inter-tool-invocation | Wires up a tool as a caller, a callee, or both, so it can launch another installed tool and exchange data with it via pptb.config.json and toolboxAPI.invocation. |
| add-agent-integration | Exposes a tool to AI assistants through the ToolBox's built-in MCP server — the agents object in pptb.config.json, execution modes, and a headless entry point. |
| validate-pptb-tool | Runs and interprets pptb-validate against a tool's package.json manifest before publishing. |
| publish-pptb-tool | Finalizes, builds, and publishes a tool to npm, then submits it to the ToolBox registry. |
| toolbox-development | Entry point for contributing to the Power Platform ToolBox host application itself — the Electron shell that loads and runs tools. Routes to the specific skill a request needs. |
| setup-toolbox-dev-env | Forks, clones, and bootstraps a local development environment for the Power Platform ToolBox host application. |
| add-host-manager | Scaffolds a new main-process manager for the ToolBox host, following the existing settings/connections/tool-lifecycle/auth pattern and wired through toolboxAPI/toolboxAPIBridge.js. |
| package-toolbox | Runs lint, type-check, and build steps for the ToolBox host, then produces a platform-specific packaged build from its three Vite bundles. |
All 18 skills in the catalog have drafted content — see VERSIONS.md for per-skill version history and docs/pptb-skills for the original design specs.