cnc

What This Skill Does

The cnc skill is a dedicated program management tool for CNC machining operations, designed to run within the OpenClaw AI agent environment. It streamlines the lifecycle of machining programs by providing a comprehensive interface to status monitoring, data entry, organizational listing, and analytical tracking. By leveraging a structured JSONL format for data storage, the skill ensures that all machining entries are persistent, accessible, and easily searchable, making it an essential utility for machine shops or engineers looking to digitize their workflow.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your local environment, use the OpenClaw installation utility. Open your terminal and run:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/ckchzh/cnc

Ensure that you have the necessary write permissions in your home directory, as the skill defaults to creating a ~/.cnc/ folder to store your machining data. You can customize the data storage location by configuring the CNC_DIR environment variable via the skill's built-in configuration command.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for CNC operators and engineers who need to manage multiple machining programs. Use it to keep track of toolpath iterations, machine settings, and project statuses. It is particularly useful for teams that need a searchable history of machining jobs or those who want to export program data to external systems for backup or auditing purposes. Because it provides quick statistics, it also serves as a performance tracking tool to see how many jobs have been processed over a given period.

Example Prompts

1. "OpenClaw, list all my active CNC machining programs and check if there are any errors in the current queue."
2. "Add a new machining entry for the aluminum chassis project with the settings currently loaded in the machine."
3. "Show me the statistics for all machining jobs completed this month and export the summary to a file."

Tips & Limitations

To get the most out of the cnc skill, consistently use the 'config' command to define your environment parameters early. Since data is stored in a JSONL (JSON Lines) format, you can easily use external command-line tools like 'jq' to perform complex queries beyond the built-in search functionality. Please note that the skill relies on local file storage, so ensure you have regular backup routines for your ~/.cnc/ directory. The skill is designed for administrative and organizational tasks, not direct control of CNC hardware, so ensure your machine connectivity is managed through appropriate CNC controller software.