parslips-skill

A Claude Code skill that teaches an agent to close the edit→build→run loop in WebObjects / ng-objects / Wonder projects by driving the Parslips Eclipse plugin's dev server and the running app's own dev endpoints (log, eval, runtime problems). (Parslips is the Eclipse plugin; Parsley is the template language it edits.)

With it, an agent editing files on disk can:

  • Refresh + rebuild so Eclipse picks up disk edits and the running app hot-swaps them (/refreshProject) — and get a build-error report instead of a false ok when the edit didn't compile
  • Validate a component template for errors without rendering the page (/validate)
  • See what's running — per launch config: running/mode/uptime, project open state, compile errors, the app's registered port (/status)
  • Start, stop and restart apps itself (/launch, /stop, /restart) — launch refuses with a named reason (closed project, compile errors, already running) instead of pretending to succeed, and waitForPort blocks until the app answers or provably died
  • Go from a fully closed workspace to a running app in one call — launch?open=true opens the project and its workspace dependencies (pom-resolved, transitive), clean-builds them, launches and waits (or /openProject to open a project + its dependencies without launching)
  • Read startup failures post-mortem (/console — the Eclipse console over HTTP, kept after the process dies) and read the running app's log (…/App.woa/log) instead of asking you to paste either
  • Check the Problems view (/problems) and hunt forgotten breakpoints (/breakpoints, with a Skip All toggle)
  • Look up an element's real API — bindings with their types and pull/push direction, required flags, and cross-binding constraints with generated messages (/elementApi) — instead of reading the element's Java source to work it out
  • Run code inside the running app — a Java REPL in the live JVM, against the app's own objects and data (a real Cayenne context, the running singleton), not a separate jshell (…/App.woa/eval)
  • Read the runtime binding errors the app rendered into its pages — the inline error boxes as JSON, instead of scraping them out of rendered HTML (…/App.woa/problems)
  • See and answer Eclipse's modal dialogs (/dialogs) — the stop-the-world prompts an agent otherwise can't see, and launches that never raise them
  • Read (or watch) everything the agent asked the dev server to do — /activity as JSON for the next session, /watch as a live narrated page for you
  • Know what hot-swaps vs. what needs an app restart — the timing traps (build-settled is not swap-landed) and how to recognise a swap that corrupted a class (restart, don't debug)

It exists because Eclipse doesn't notice edits made outside its own editor — so without these hooks, an agent's disk edits silently do nothing. The dev server is self-describing: GET http://localhost:9485/ returns a JSON index of every endpoint, and the skill teaches the agent to trust that index over its own docs (older plugin builds expose a smaller endpoint set; the skill degrades gracefully).

Install (personal — all your projects)

Clone, then symlink the skill folder into your personal skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/undur/parslips-skill.git
ln -s "$PWD/parslips-skill/parslips-skill" ~/.claude/skills/parslips-skill

(A symlink means git pull updates the skill in place. Or just cp -r the parslips-skill/ folder into ~/.claude/skills/ if you prefer a copy.)

Install (project — shared via a repo)

Drop the parslips-skill/ folder into a project's .claude/skills/ and commit it; anyone (or any agent) working in that repo gets it automatically.

Permissions (so the calls don't prompt)

The skill drives the dev server with curl to localhost. To let an agent run the loop without approving each call, add an allowlist to your settings (~/.claude/settings.json for personal, or a project's .claude/settings.json). See settings.snippet.json for a ready-to-merge block — it allowlists curl to localhost:9485 (the dev server) and the local app port. Adjust the app port to match yours.

What it triggers on

Working in a project with .wo component bundles, <wo:…>/<webobject> template tags, build.properties with project.base, WOComponent/NGComponent classes, or wonder-slim/ERExtensions.

Requirements (on the developer's side)

  • Eclipse running the Parslips plugin (https://undur.github.io/parslips/repository/)
  • The app launched from Eclipse in debug mode (JBR + HotswapAgent recommended for broad hot reload)
  • The app-runtime endpoints (log, eval, problems) are served by the framework in dev mode — recent wonder-slim/ERExtensions or ng-objects. eval runs code in the live JVM and is restricted to loopback clients. An older framework build serves a smaller set (or just log); the editor-side endpoints (/validate, /elementApi, …) come from the Parslips plugin and are independent of it.

Full details — every endpoint, parameters, runtime differences, and setup — are in parslips-skill/references/endpoints.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.