Xweather API & Maps — Agent Skills

Six Agent Skills for the Xweather developer platform: build Weather API request URLs, generate Raster Maps imagery and tile URLs, work with the MapsGL SDKs for the web and for Apple and Android platforms, and set up pushed data delivery.

Agent Skills is an open standard originally published by Anthropic, so these work in any skills-compatible agent — OpenAI Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Goose, OpenHands, JetBrains Junie, Claude Code, and others. The repository also packages the same skills as installable plugins for Claude Code and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex plugin surfaces.

The skills

Install

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add vaisala-xweather/xweather-agent-skills
/plugin install xweather@vaisala-xweather
/reload-plugins

In the Claude app: Settings → Plugins → Add → vaisala-xweather/xweather-agent-skills.

Installing prompts for nothing and configures nothing. When developing, load the plugin directly: claude --plugin-dir ./plugins/xweather.

OpenAI Codex

Install the plugin from this repository’s marketplace:

codex plugin marketplace add vaisala-xweather/xweather-agent-skills
codex plugin add xweather@vaisala-xweather

Start a new Codex thread after installation so the new skills are loaded. The repository retains its Claude marketplace as the shared catalog because Codex supports the legacy-compatible .claude-plugin/marketplace.json location; plugins/xweather/.codex-plugin/plugin.json supplies the first-class OpenAI plugin metadata.

For a skills-only installation, Codex also discovers skills in .agents/skills directories — note the plural .agents:

git clone https://github.com/vaisala-xweather/xweather-agent-skills.git
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills
ln -s "$PWD"/xweather-agent-skills/plugins/xweather/skills/* ~/.agents/skills/

Symlinking rather than copying means git pull updates a skills-only installation in place. Restart Codex if a skill doesn’t appear. Individual skills can be disabled in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[[skills.config]]
path = "/Users/you/.agents/skills/mapsgl/SKILL.md"
enabled = false

Gemini CLI and Antigravity CLI

There’s no plugin package for Google’s agents, but both of them load SKILL.md files directly from a skills directory. Google replaced Gemini CLI with Antigravity CLI (agy) for individual users in June 2026. Gemini CLI still works for Gemini Code Assist Standard and Enterprise accounts and with paid API keys. The two CLIs read skills from different places:

.agents/skills is the same location Codex reads. If you already symlinked the skills there for Codex, Gemini CLI finds them with no further setup. For a personal installation:

git clone https://github.com/vaisala-xweather/xweather-agent-skills.git

# Gemini CLI
mkdir -p ~/.gemini/skills
ln -s "$PWD"/xweather-agent-skills/plugins/xweather/skills/* ~/.gemini/skills/

# Antigravity CLI
mkdir -p ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills
ln -s "$PWD"/xweather-agent-skills/plugins/xweather/skills/* ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/

Inside a running Gemini CLI session, /skills reload picks up new skills without restarting. /skills list confirms they loaded, and /skills disable mapsgl turns off any skill you don’t need. As with Codex, symlinks mean a git pull updates the installed skills in place.

Other skills-compatible agents

Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code, Goose, OpenHands, JetBrains Junie and others all read the same SKILL.md files but look in different directories. Clone the repo and symlink plugins/xweather/skills/* into whichever location your client documents — links the per-tool instructions.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT can load Agent Skills packaged in an OpenAI plugin. This repository includes the required .codex-plugin/plugin.json; public discovery in ChatGPT and Codex requires a separate submission to OpenAI’s shared plugin directory. The hosted Xweather MCP server remains available when direct live-data tools are preferred; see The Xweather MCP server below.

Helper scripts

Two standard-library Python 3 programs, bundled with the skills that use them:

Both read credentials from the environment, so secrets stay out of shell history and out of the printed output:

export XWEATHER_CLIENT_ID='…' XWEATHER_CLIENT_SECRET='…'

python3 plugins/xweather/skills/weather-api/scripts/xwrequest.py '/observations/seattle,wa?filter=allstations&limit=3'
python3 plugins/xweather/skills/raster-maps/scripts/xwmap.py 'flat,radar,admin/800x600/minneapolis,mn,7/current.png' -o radar.png
python3 plugins/xweather/skills/raster-maps/scripts/xwmap.py 'flat,lightning-strikes/800x600/dallas,tx,7/current.png' --estimate-only

Claude Code additionally exposes them as bare xwrequest / xwmap commands via bin/, but the skills never assume that.

Credentials

Keys come from the API Keys page at . Each key pair is bound to a namespace — a top-level domain for web, or a reverse-DNS bundle id for mobile. A request from outside that namespace fails with unauthorized_namespace on the Weather API, or a 403 authorization_error on Raster Maps, regardless of whether the URL is otherwise correct.

Raster Maps puts credentials in the URL path, so a tile URL used in client-side JavaScript exposes the key pair to anyone viewing the page. The namespace binding is what limits the damage.

The Xweather MCP server

Xweather hosts an MCP server at https://mcp.api.xweather.com/mcp that answers weather questions directly instead of producing URLs for you to call — useful when direct live-data tools are a better fit than URL-building guidance.

It is deliberately not bundled here. A bundled MCP server can’t be conditionally disabled, so anyone without an MCP-enabled subscription would get a permanent connection error for a feature they never asked for. Connect it yourself instead.

In every form below, the token is your client id and secret joined by a single underscore — abc123_def456, not two separate values.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http xweather https://mcp.api.xweather.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer CLIENT_ID_CLIENT_SECRET"

Add --scope user for all projects, or --scope project to share it with a repo via .mcp.json.

ChatGPT (Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu — custom connectors need a paid plan): Settings → Connectors → advanced settings → enable Developer mode, then add a connector with this URL. ChatGPT can’t send custom headers, so the token goes in the query string instead:

https://mcp.api.xweather.com/mcp?api_key=CLIENT_ID_CLIENT_SECRET

Claude.ai (Pro or Max): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, same URL form as ChatGPT — the desktop app also can’t set headers.

Narrow the loaded tools with &include_tags=general,forecast,summary if people have other MCP servers connected; all six groups at once crowds the model’s tool choices. The weather-api skill documents the server in full — all three auth methods, the six tool tag groups, filter precedence, and how to read a failed connection.

Layout

AGENTS.md                             conventions for agents working in this repo
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json       the Claude marketplace catalog
scripts/regenerate_references.py      regenerates the catalog-derived references
.github/workflows/                    weekly reference refresh
plugins/xweather/                     the plugin
├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json        Claude Code plugin manifest
├── .codex-plugin/plugin.json         ChatGPT and Codex plugin manifest
├── bin/                              xwrequest, xwmap — Claude Code puts these on PATH
└── skills/                           the six skills — the portable payload
    ├── weather-api/
    ├── raster-maps/
    ├── mapsgl/
    ├── mapsgl-apple/
    ├── mapsgl-android/
    └── webhooks/

The marketplace catalog sits at the repository root and the plugin lives in plugins/xweather/, the layout anthropics/claude-code uses. That nesting is required because the Claude app’s marketplace sync resolves relative plugin sources. Codex also recognizes this marketplace location for compatibility, so a second catalog under .agents/ would only duplicate release metadata.

There is still exactly one copy of the skills. Both plugin manifests and skills-compatible agents load plugins/xweather/skills/ instead of maintaining vendor-specific copies.

Development

claude --plugin-dir ./plugins/xweather   # load in Claude Code without installing
claude plugin validate .                 # validate the manifests
python3 scripts/validate_packaging.py    # compare shared marketplace, manifest, and skill metadata
python3 scripts/check_skill_links.py --skip-links   # every references/*.md mention resolves
python3 scripts/check_skill_links.py                # the above, plus probe every URL
python3 scripts/build_dist.py            # build OpenAI and Claude ZIPs in dist/
skills-ref validate ./plugins/xweather/skills/weather-api   # validate against the Agent Skills spec

check_skill_links.py catches the two ways skill content rots without failing any other check: a references/foo.md mention that no longer resolves, and a URL that has gone dead. .github/workflows/check-skills.yml runs the reference half on every skill change and the link half weekly — links stay off pull requests so a third-party outage can’t block unrelated work.

The provider-neutral SKILL.md files retain metadata.version for Agent Skills packaging. The OpenAI uploader treats SKILL.md metadata as misplaced interface configuration, so the OpenAI build removes those metadata blocks from the ZIP only. It keeps each source file unchanged and relies on the plugin-level interface in .codex-plugin/plugin.json rather than per-skill interface files. The Claude build omits the top-level bin/ wrappers, which claude.ai-hosted plugins do not accept; the equivalent Python helpers remain bundled inside their skills. Both generated archives go in the gitignored dist/ directory.

.github/workflows/validate-packaging.yml runs the metadata comparison for relevant pushes and pull requests. skills-ref comes from . /reload-plugins picks up edits without restarting a Claude Code session.

Local checks before pushing

git config core.hooksPath .githooks    # once per clone

That enables a pre-push hook running scripts/validate_packaging.py, which asserts that the Claude and Codex plugin manifests agree on every shared property, plus claude plugin validate . --strict when the CLI is on PATH. Both are local and instant. SKIP_PREPUSH=1 git push bypasses it.

Run the packaging check on its own at any time:

python3 scripts/validate_packaging.py

The reference regeneration is deliberately not in the hook — it fetches ~60 doc pages, which is too slow for a push. CI covers it.

Regenerating the references

Five reference files are generated from live Xweather catalogs rather than hand-written, so they go stale as the products change:

python3 scripts/regenerate_references.py           # rewrite in place
python3 scripts/regenerate_references.py --check   # exit 1 on drift, writes nothing

.github/workflows/refresh-references.yml runs the regeneration weekly and opens a PR when anything drifts, and runs --check on any PR touching a generated file so a hand-edit fails loudly.

Three further files embed generated content inside hand-written prose: access-cost.md and map-units.md carry multiplier tables, and mapsgl/references/weather-layers.md documents the catalog’s render types, categories, and which codes are composite. The script reports drift in those but won’t rewrite them, since regenerating would destroy the surrounding explanation.

Endpoint doc pages render their parameter tables client-side, so the script reads the Next.js RSC payload out of the HTML rather than the rendered DOM. That’s inherently coupled to Xweather’s docs stack; if it changes, the script refuses to write near-empty files and fails loudly instead of quietly emptying a reference. The two layer catalogs are plain JSON endpoints and need no scraping.

Releasing

Both plugin manifests set an explicit version, so installed users only receive a new packaged release when it is bumped. Keep version in plugins/xweather/.claude-plugin/plugin.json and plugins/xweather/.codex-plugin/plugin.json aligned with metadata.version in every SKILL.md. Run python3 scripts/validate_packaging.py before releasing; CI rejects drift in names, versions, display metadata, or the shared marketplace source.

Never change the plugin’s name (xweather). It keys enabledPlugins, pluginConfigs, and plugin installation state, and it namespaces the skills, so renaming breaks existing installs. To change the label users see, update the Claude manifest and marketplace entry plus interface.displayName in the Codex manifest.

Requirements

• An Xweather account with the relevant product access. A free developer account works for evaluation, with a 2000×2000 static-map size cap.
• python3 for the two helper scripts (standard library only — nothing to install).
• Optional: a subscription including MCP access, if you separately connect the Xweather MCP server.
• Optional: the Webhooks premium add-on, to actually receive pushed data. The webhooks skill is useful before that — you can build and test a receiver against the sample payloads first.