What is catalyst-basics?

A setup and reference guide for Zoho Catalyst, a platform for building and running applications. It explains Catalyst’s project structure, environments, command-line tools, and identifiers such as project, organization, table, and segment IDs.

Use it when starting or identifying a Catalyst project, checking its configuration files, finding Catalyst IDs, or distinguishing development from production.

It prevents work from being run against the wrong Catalyst organization or project. It also ensures setup commands run without interactive prompts.

catalyst-basics — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by catalystbyzoho: A setup and reference guide for Zoho Catalyst, a…

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin/catalyst-basics

Any agent

npx skills add catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin --skill catalyst-basics

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install claude-plugin, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 1 command, 1 hook, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin/catalyst-basics.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin/catalyst-basics)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin/catalyst-basics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin/catalyst-basics.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,411 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00081	$0.01411
Opus 5	$0.00041	$0.00705
Sonnet 5	$0.00016	$0.00282
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00141

Measured 4d ago against content hash 6958a69b419f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

catalyst-basics scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/catalyst-basics/SKILL.md · 57 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 57 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

⚠️ PRE-FLIGHT CHECK: Before creating any project files, confirm that .catalystrc and catalyst.json exist in the project directory. If they don't:

Use MCP (CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Organizations → CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Projects) to list orgs/projects.

🔒 Never assume the org/project. If there is no project initialized, or the project is ambiguous, STOP and ask the user which project (and org) to work in — a single project in the list is not permission to auto-select it; confirm first. Never infer the project from the directory name or a past session. (Full rule: references/preflight.md → Golden Rule.)

Only after the project is resolved and confirmed run: catalyst init --org <orgId> -p <projectId> -ni

Never ask the user to run catalyst init interactively. Never create these files manually — they are CLI-generated and must come from the CLI.

Always run the catalyst CLI in non-interactive mode. Every command takes a -ni / --non-interactive flag (or set ZCATALYST_NON_INTERACTIVE=1; requires CLI v1.27.0+) and accepts its inputs as flags, so the CLI never prompts. Interactive menus exist for humans only — agents must never rely on them. The one exception is catalyst login, whose browser OAuth step needs the user. See the required flags per command in references/cli.md.

How It Works

Pre-flight first — Establish and verify org/project context per the canonical sequence in references/preflight.md (read .catalystrc for org/project, confirm parity with MCP, or resolve via MCP if .catalystrc is absent). Use MCP for all other resource IDs instead of asking the user.
New to Catalyst? — If the user is setting up Catalyst for the first time or asking "how do I start", load references/quick-start.md for the full walkthrough.
Console navigation — If the user asks how to find IDs, create tables, set permissions, or configure CORS in the console, load references/console-ui-guide.md.
Project structure — Load references/project-basics.md for directory layout, catalyst.json, IDs, and dev-to-prod checklist.
CLI questions — Load references/cli.md for the exact command, flags, and safety rules.
Answer — Provide the specific ID path or CLI command needed. Never ask the user to manually look up IDs when MCP is connected.

Read the full file on GitHub · 57 lines

Files

What ships with it

10 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

4d ago First seen · 57 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 6958a69b419f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

catalyst-basics is a skill published in the GitHub repository catalystbyzoho/claude-plugin (0 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 1,411 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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