FileMaker Developer Skill Collection
- Darrin Southern
- Jun 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 5
"Jack of all trades, master of none." ~ Geffray Mynshul, Essays and Characters of a Prison, first published in 1618.
Every experienced FileMaker Developer knows the best practice: build focused 'utility' Scripts in the Script Workspace, not big mega-scripts that try to do everything. A script that validates a record, a script that sends a notification, a script that calculates a total. Each one does a single job, and each one can be called from anywhere it's needed.
This has become the best practice for building Skills too. A single, sprawling Skill that tries to cover script steps, plugin functions, and your own house rules in one file is the Skill equivalent of a mega-script. It's hard to maintain, hard to extend, and it forces the Agent to load far more context than the prompt in front of it actually needs.
Example: The FileMaker Compliance Solution sends out over 75 notification emails through the Office 365 API via the 'Insert from URL' script step. Rather than repeating the authentication and sending of the payload to the API in every single one of the 75 emails, each script calls separate configuration & sending scripts.
Skill Chaining is the Answer
The practice is the same one we've used in Script Workspace for years, applied to Skills. This is Skill Chaining.
Just as a master script calls a series of utility sub-scripts rather than inlining their logic, a top-level Skill can call other Skills when it needs specialised information, passing the request through rather than absorbing all of that domain knowledge itself.
fmp-dev Skills Collection
To begin your own Skill Chaining journey, it's worth looking at a working example. Here's a foundation set of 'fmp-dev' Skills I've built and published for the Community, each one scoped the way a good utility script is scoped: one job, done well.
The initial release of this collection has the following Skills - with GitHub Links:
This Skill can be considered the top level or Parent Skill. which is why it's called the Orchestrator Skill. Its job is to call the other Skills for specialised information, and report back on sub-skill usage.
The core reference Skill that defines the Claris script steps and functions locally, with usage and examples, with links to the Official documentation for extra information and updates, based on the recently released markdown (.md) format for these Help Documents.
This is the most 'customisable' Skill in this Collection, and where the real fun comes in. You teach the Skill the rules for how you prefer to structure and apply the functions above, with a clear gate controlling that structure. This is where your personal 'design patterns' can be applied to Developer Functions.
Goya's free plugin and functions have been released online as markdown (.md). This skill allows access to this information locally, with links to the original online reference.
This plugin has a mix of free and licensed functions. Again, the skill allows access to this information locally, with links to the original online markdown (.md) references.
Skill Collection Download
This is released under CC BY 4.0. Use it, fork it, adapt it. Attribute it.
I've bundled up all the Skills into one zip here, for easy download.
Extra Project for this Skill Collection
A secondary project for this Collection is a project to allow the Agent to create a script with all the script steps and function for testing and checking other Skills.
The project requires the base Skills from the Collection, along with the filemaker-xml Skills released by Andy Kear.
A Skill for generating a single, comprehensive FileMaker Pro script that exercises every resolvable script step and calculation function against a target file.
Covers field types, auto-enter, validation, calculation and summary fields, verified against FileMaker's own exports rather than inferred.
Every step ID, element ordering rule, and silent failure mode, established through empirical round-trip testing against production FileMaker solutions.
Further Skills to extend this Collection
The main goal of the Skill Collection is to 'extract' the necessary information the Agent requires to respond to the prompt, economically, along with minimising the hallucinations.
Quick list of Skills to add to extend your FileMaker Skill Collection.
Testing or Linter Skill
Testing or 'Linter' Skills can also be added to this Collection. This requires more planning and design, as you don't really want each script executed while you are still coding.
Self Learning Skills
The end goal is for the Skill to hold the bulk of the knowledge required to Code, particularly for our FileMaker environment.
And to 'develop' as we do – pun intended. Each coding prompt session should end with what the Skill has learnt, and what information to update the 'gate' Skill with this newly acquired information.
Open Source Platform and plugin to analyse solutions, generate/update scripts, design layouts, build schema & much more.
ProofKit connects your AI agent to your file, gives it useful context, and closes the loop so it can build, test, refine, and deploy interfaces that fit your app.
Takeaway
Now is the time to start constructing your Agentic FileMaker Development and Coding Environment with focused Skills, to 'develop' your own skills in this new and exciting addition to our FileMaker Platform . . .
Comments