Drop a Database into Claude Code in 30 Seconds: HeliosDB Skill Bundles
heliosdb-nano has no skills subcommand (its bundle installs with a script from the source), HeliosDB Lite and Full are not on crates.io (licensed customers receive them through sales), Lite's skills install takes a destination directory, and Full installs its bundle with a script in the licensed distribution. HeliosDB Full 8.3.0 opens 7 database wire protocols plus an HTTP gateway. Current skill counts are on build-with-agents.html.
Every HeliosDB product ships its own catalogue of agentic-ops skills. Instead of reading a 4 000-line README before you can use the database, you run one command and an LLM coding agent — Claude Code, Codex CLI, any MCP-aware tool — gets a complete A→Z verb catalogue: every CLI flag, every REPL meta-command, every public Rust API, every MCP tool. The agent knows the database the moment it enters the project.
One-liner per product
# Nano: the bundle installs with a script from the source
git clone https://github.com/HeliosDatabase/HeliosDB-Nano
bash HeliosDB-Nano/scripts/install-agent-skills.sh
# Lite: licensed binary from HeliosDB sales
heliosdb-lite skills install ~/.claude/skills
# Full: in the licensed distribution
bash scripts/install-skills.sh
# HeliosProxy
cargo install heliosdb-proxy
heliosdb-proxy install skillsHeliosProxy's command unpacks a bundled .claude/skills/ tree (and mirrors it to ~/.codex/skills/); the Nano, Lite and Full installers copy or link their bundles into ~/.claude/skills/. Each product also carries an aggregate AGENTS.md — the de-facto convention LLM agents read first.
What a skill looks like
A skill is a single SKILL.md file scoped to one operational domain. Nano ships 17 of them: heliosdb-nano-overview, -install, -connect, -schema, -query, -transactions, -branches, -time-travel, -backup, -vector, -code-graph, -graph-rag, -mcp, -server, -deploy, -observability, -migrate. Plus two reference helpers: _index/verb-map.md (every CLI flag → SQL function → MCP tool, normalised) and _index/feature-matrix.md (cargo feature ↔ skill).
Lite ships 64 skills across foundation, DML/DDL, ops, advanced features, security, HA/replication, and AI/agent surface. Full ships 116, including client skills for its listeners. HeliosProxy ships 22 operator skills covering pool tuning, failover rehearsal, time-travel replay, plugin signing, and PG-12→17 upgrade orchestration.
Why this matters
Coding agents are great at applying patterns they've seen, mediocre at exploring unfamiliar APIs. Without a skill catalogue, an agent fumbles through HeliosDB's surface the same way a new hire does: read the README, miss the relevant section, run the wrong command, hit a confusing error, retry. With the catalogue, the agent reads AGENTS.md once and knows the exact verb — CREATE BRANCH staging FROM main, SELECT * FROM products AS OF TIMESTAMP '2026-04-01', graph_bfs(...), WITH CONTEXT(...) — for the task in front of it.
Installer flags
These flags belong to heliosdb-proxy install skills. Nano's script takes only --symlink; Lite's skills install <target> takes --symlink, --catalog claude|codex and --force.
--target claude|codex|both— default is both. Picks where the bundle lands.--symlink— instead of copying, symlink into~/.local/share/heliosdb-<product>/skills/so re-running after a binary upgrade refreshes the bundle in place.--force— overwrite any pre-existingheliosdb-*skill directories. Without this, the installer backs up existing dirs to*.bak.<unix-ts>.--dry-run— print the planned actions without writing.
What's next
The skill bundles ship in every release going forward. Expect skill counts to grow with feature work — we treat skills as first-class deliverables alongside the code. If a feature ships without a skill, it doesn't ship.
Repos: Nano · HeliosProxy. HeliosDB Lite and Full are provided to licensed customers through sales@ (show).