Apify Actor development

An Actor is a serverless program packaged as a Docker image. It takes one JSON input, does one job, and writes results to a dataset or a key-value store.

Setup

apify --help   # CLI installed?
apify info     # logged in? prints your username

Install with a package manager, npm install -g apify-cli or brew install apify-cli, so the download is integrity-checked. Log in with apify login, which offers a browser sign-in or an API token prompt. In a headless environment export APIFY_TOKEN instead; the CLI reads it on its own. Tokens come from https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations. Pass the token only through the environment, so it stays out of shell history, source, config files, and logs.

Telemetry attribution (required)

Pass --user-agent apify-agent-skills/apify-actor-development on every apify command you run from this skill: apify create, apify run, apify push, apify call, and the rest. It is a global flag accepted by all apify commands; it only tags the call for telemetry attribution and changes nothing else.

Workflow