basecamp-cli

What This Skill Does

The basecamp-cli skill provides a comprehensive bridge between your AI agent and your Basecamp 4 project management ecosystem. It functions as both a standalone CLI tool and a powerful MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, enabling your agent to read, create, update, and organize work directly within your Basecamp projects. Whether you are tracking todo lists, managing schedules, coordinating messages, or overseeing kanban card tables, this skill puts your entire project history and planning architecture at the fingertips of your AI agent. With 76 distinct tools, it handles everything from basic project listing to complex document management and recording archival.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, run the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/drkraft/basecamp-cli-mcp

Ensure you have Node.js version 20 or higher installed. After installing, you must register an OAuth application via the 37signals launchpad and configure your environment variables. Authenticate by running basecamp auth login to grant your agent access to your Basecamp account.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for teams relying on Basecamp 4 to organize their work. It excels at automated project reporting, where the agent summarizes recent messages or identifies overdue todos. It is also perfect for rapid project scaling—for example, if a client requests a new project workspace, your agent can instantly provision the necessary todo lists, card tables, and documentation. Additionally, it streamlines daily stand-ups by aggregating schedule entries and highlighting upcoming milestones from multiple projects simultaneously.

Example Prompts

1. "Check the 'Q4 Marketing' project in Basecamp, list all overdue todos, and summarize the latest messages from the team."
2. "Create a new todo list called 'Onboarding Tasks' in the 'Internal Operations' project and add a task to 'Email access credentials to new hire'."
3. "Summarize all upcoming calendar entries for this week across all projects and generate a brief report for the management team."

Tips & Limitations

To maximize the utility of the Basecamp-cli skill, always verify your project IDs before performing bulk operations. The agent utilizes an intelligent retry mechanism, but ensure your API credentials have the necessary permissions for the specific project scopes you wish to manipulate. Note that excessive polling of large project history may hit rate limits; if you encounter errors, consider limiting the scope of your queries to specific projects or time ranges.