setup

Initialize the skill: validate environment variables, initialize API clients, and prepare resources. Called once when the skill is loaded, before any tool registration.

This is a concrete method with a default that returns true. Override it in your SkillBase subclass when you need initialization logic or need to short-circuit loading on invalid config.

Returning false from setup() causes SkillManager.addSkill() (and AgentBase.addSkill()) to fail closed: the skill is not registered and the call throws. This matches the Python SDK’s behavior — never silently continue with a half-initialized skill.

Takes no parameters.

Returns

Promise<boolean> — true on success, false to signal that the skill cannot be loaded (invalid config, missing credentials, failed handshake, etc.).

Example

1 class MySkill extends SkillBase {
2   override async setup(): Promise<boolean> {
3     if (!this.hasAllEnvVars()) return false;
4     const missing = await this.validatePackages();
5     if (missing.length) return false;
6     // Initialize API connections here
7     return true;
8   }
9 }

1	class MySkill extends SkillBase {
2	override async setup(): Promise<boolean> {
3	if (!this.hasAllEnvVars()) return false;
4	const missing = await this.validatePackages();
5	if (missing.length) return false;
6	// Initialize API connections here
7	return true;
8	}
9	}