apify-actor-development

SKILL.md

Apify Actor development

Important: Before you begin, fill in the generatedBy property in the meta section of .actor/actor.json. Replace it with the tool and model you're currently using, such as "Claude Code with Claude Sonnet 4.5". This helps Apify monitor and improve AGENTS.md for specific AI tools and models.

What are Apify Actors?

Actors are serverless programs inspired by the UNIX philosophy - programs that do one thing well and can be easily combined to build complex systems. They're packaged as Docker images and run in isolated containers in the cloud.

Core Concepts:

Accept well-defined JSON input

Perform isolated tasks (web scraping, automation, data processing)

Produce structured JSON output to datasets and/or store data in key-value stores

Can run from seconds to hours or even indefinitely

Persist state and can be restarted

Prerequisites and setup (mandatory)

Before creating or modifying Actors, verify that apify CLI is installed apify --help.