What It Does
The conductor-skills plugin connects Claude Code directly to Conductor, an open-source workflow orchestration engine. Once installed, Claude can author workflow definitions, start executions, monitor status, retry failures, and even scaffold worker code in multiple languages—all through natural language prompts in your terminal.
This transforms Claude Code from a coding assistant into a workflow automation engineer. Instead of just writing the code for a pipeline, Claude can now deploy and manage the pipeline itself.
Setup
Installation is a two-command process:
/plugin marketplace add conductor-oss/conductor-skills
/plugin install conductor@conductor-skills
The plugin automatically installs the Conductor CLI and can either connect to an existing Conductor server or start a local one for you. It handles authentication and environment profiles, letting you switch between dev, staging, and production workflows.
When To Use It
Use this plugin when you need Claude to manage multi-step, conditional processes that involve external services. The examples from the source are perfect starting points:
- Automated Alerting: "Create a workflow that calls the GitHub API to get open issues and sends a Slack notification"
- Operational Recovery: "Show me all failed workflow executions from the last hour and retry them"
- Worker Scaffolding: "Write a Python worker that processes image thumbnails"
- Human-in-the-Loop: "Add a WAIT task before the payment step in my checkout workflow and visualize it"
The visualization feature (Mermaid diagrams) is particularly valuable for understanding complex workflows before deployment. The plugin supports all Conductor task types: HTTP calls, SWITCH (conditional logic), FORK_JOIN (parallel execution), WAIT, HUMAN (approval tasks), and more.
Integration Pattern
This plugin exemplifies the MCP (Model Context Protocol) pattern we've covered extensively—turning Claude Code from a chatbot into an executor. As noted in our previous article "Stop Using Claude Code as a Chatbot. MCP Turns It Into an Executor," the real power comes from connecting Claude to execution environments.
Since the plugin also works with 11 other AI agents (including Cursor, Windsurf, and GitHub Copilot), you can maintain consistent workflow definitions across different AI tools. This is crucial for team environments where developers use varied assistants.
Practical Prompt Template
When working with the plugin, structure your prompts for clarity:
Using the Conductor plugin:
1. Create a workflow that [describe objective]
2. Use these parameters: [list key parameters]
3. Include error handling for [specific failure mode]
4. Visualize the workflow as a Mermaid diagram
5. Deploy it to the [environment] profile
This gives Claude clear steps and ensures you get executable workflow definitions rather than just conceptual descriptions.
