Use Watt with AI Coding Agents

Problem

You want an AI coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, and others) to set up and run Platformatic Watt for you, instead of writing watt.json and wiring up dependencies and deployment manifests by hand. You need the agent to:

• Detect your framework and generate a correct watt.json
• Install the right wattpm and @platformatic/* packages
• Produce Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud deployment configuration
• Guide you through wattpm CLI commands, observability, scheduling, and profiling

When to use this solution:

• You are starting a new Watt project or porting an existing application
• You already use an AI coding agent and want it to follow Watt best practices
• You want consistent, repeatable Watt setup across projects and teammates

Solution

Platformatic publishes an official Agent Skill for Watt. A skill is a set of Markdown instructions that a skills-compatible agent reads and follows. The Watt skill tells your agent how to set up, configure, and deploy Watt, so you do not have to spell out each step.

The skill follows the Agent Skills open standard, so it works with any skills-compatible agent. Loaded into Claude Code, it also adds slash commands.

The skill is maintained in the platformatic/skills repository.

Install the skill

For any skills-compatible agent:

npx skills add platformatic/skills

The installer clones the repository and lets you pick which skills to install. Select watt (and optionally kafka and workflow):

Alternatively, clone the repository and point your agent at the skills/ directory:

git clone https://github.com/platformatic/skills.git

For Claude Code, load it as a plugin to enable slash commands:

claude --plugin-dir /path/to/skills

Use the skill

Once the skill is installed, describe what you want in plain language. The agent matches the request against the skill and runs the matching workflow. For example:

• "Add Watt to this Next.js project"
• "Generate a Dockerfile for my Watt app"
• "Deploy this to Kubernetes"
• "Create a multi-service enterprise setup"
• "Capture a CPU profile for my Watt app with pprof"

Claude Code slash commands

When the skill is loaded as a Claude Code plugin, it exposes argument-based slash commands. These are specific to Claude Code and are not part of the Agent Skills standard:

/watt                  # auto-detect the framework and integrate Watt
/watt init nextjs      # integrate with a framework hint
/watt deploy docker    # generate Docker configuration
/watt deploy k8s       # generate Kubernetes manifests
/watt enterprise       # multi-service setup
/watt migrate          # migrate an existing application
/watt cli              # wattpm CLI reference
/watt status           # check Watt configuration health

What the skill can do

Capability	Description
Framework detection	Identifies Next.js, Nuxt, React Router, TanStack Start, Vite, Remix, Astro, NestJS, Express, Fastify, Koa, WordPress, Laravel, and PHP
Configuration generation	Creates a watt.json tuned to the detected framework
Dependency installation	Installs wattpm and the matching @platformatic/* package
Deployment automation	Generates Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud (Fly.io, Railway, Render) configuration
CLI guidance	Explains wattpm commands such as create, inject, logs, ps, and pprof
Observability	Sets up logging (Pino), tracing (OpenTelemetry), and metrics (Prometheus)
Scheduled jobs	Configures cron-based tasks with retry support
Performance profiling	Captures CPU profiles and heap snapshots, and generates flamegraphs

Supported frameworks

Framework	Package	Detection
Next.js	@platformatic/next	next.config.{js,ts,mjs}
Nuxt	@platformatic/nuxt	nuxt.config.{ts,js,mjs}
React Router	@platformatic/react-router	react-router.config.{ts,js}
TanStack Start	@platformatic/tanstack	@tanstack/react-start in dependencies
Vite	@platformatic/vite	vite.config.{js,ts,mjs} (fallback for Vite apps)
Remix	@platformatic/remix	remix.config.js
Astro	@platformatic/astro	astro.config.{mjs,ts}
Express	@platformatic/node	express in dependencies
Fastify	@platformatic/node	fastify in dependencies
Koa	@platformatic/node	koa in dependencies
NestJS	@platformatic/node	nest-cli.json or @nestjs/core
WordPress	@platformatic/php	wp-config.php
Laravel	@platformatic/php	artisan plus composer.json
PHP	@platformatic/php	composer.json plus public/index.php

Several frameworks build on Vite (React Router, TanStack Start, Remix, Astro) and ship a vite.config.*. The agent matches the specific framework first and falls back to @platformatic/vite only when no more specific signal is present.

Requirements

• Node.js v22.19.0 or higher
• A skills-compatible agent (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, and others)

Related skills

The platformatic/skills repository also ships companion skills:

• kafka - event-driven microservices with @platformatic/kafka and kafka-hooks, including migrations from KafkaJS and node-rdkafka
• workflow - building applications with the Vercel Workflow SDK against a self-hosted Platformatic Workflow Service via @platformatic/world

See also

• Watt overview
• Watt CLI commands
• platformatic/skills repository
• Agent Skills standard