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🎁 Session Gift · Show & Tell #2

The Connection
Pre-Flight Skill

Before a scheduled or automated task runs, this Skill checks that the tools it depends on — Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, a database — are actually connected, and tells you exactly what to fix if something's down. No more automations that fail silently because a login expired.

How it works — no setup, works in any chat

How to add it — pick one

✅ Recommended Add from the Wix Skills library

In Claude, go to Customize → Skills → Browse, search "Connection Pre-Flight", and click Add. That's it.

Why this one: the Skill stays linked to the creator, so when it's improved you get the update automatically — nothing to re-download or re-paste.

Download the file (Plan B)

Grab the zip, then in Claude go to Customize → Skills → Add → Upload a skill and select it.

⬇ Download connection-preflight-skill.zip

Note: also a frozen snapshot — re-download to get a newer version.

Once added, just say "run a connection pre-flight."

What this Skill actually does

Think of it as a pre-flight checklist for anything automated. Before Claude kicks off a scheduled report, a recurring digest, or any task that reaches out to your other tools, this Skill first confirms those tools are actually reachable — and gives you a clear go / no-go before anything runs.

It only checks the plumbing. It never sends, posts, or changes anything — every check is a tiny, read-only peek just to prove the connection answers.

How it works — in three steps

  1. Decides what to check. Name your tools inline (pre-flight for Slack, Drive, Gmail) and it checks exactly those — flagging any that are required but missing. Say nothing specific and it checks everything currently connected.
  2. Probes each one, read-only. One lightweight read per tool — list a single recent Drive file, fetch a Slack channel's info, peek at one Gmail thread — just enough to confirm it responds.
  3. Reports back with a verdict. A simple table (each connection ✓ or ✗) plus a plain-English result: ✅ all good to go, or ⛔ not ready — with the exact fix for anything that's down.

Why it's worth having

Automations can't stop to ask you to log back in. When a connector's login quietly expires, the whole task fails — often without you noticing. A 10-second pre-flight catches it first, so your automations don't fail silently.

💡 Best move: run it at the start of your day

Set up a scheduled run of this Skill for first thing each morning. When you sit down, you already have a green light that everything's connected — and you can go straight into running your daily Skills without wondering whether something's down.

Just tell Claude: "schedule a connection pre-flight every weekday at 8am."

⚠️ Connections can drop during the day

A connection can quietly go stale if your computer is closed/asleep or your internet drops — even after a clean morning check. If that happens, the earlier green light is no longer a guarantee.

So if you've been offline or your machine has been shut, run the pre-flight again before kicking off anything important — a quick "run a connection pre-flight" confirms you're still good before you rely on it.

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