surf-check

What This Skill Does

The surf-check skill is a specialized decision engine for OpenClaw designed to monitor surf forecasts and alert users when conditions meet specific, actionable criteria. Rather than providing an endless stream of raw data, this skill processes forecast information and filters it based on your defined preferences for wave height and quality. It acts as an automated surf buddy, constantly evaluating whether conditions are worth the drive to the beach. The skill handles the complexity of API interactions and logic-based filtering, leaving you with simple, human-readable notifications when the waves are breaking well.

Installation

To integrate surf-check into your environment, follow these steps:

1. Execute the installation command via your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/kevinmcnamee/surf-check.
2. Navigate to the installed directory using cd {baseDir}.
3. Run npm install to initialize dependencies.
4. Optionally, configure your preferred breaks by creating a ~/.surf-check.json file. This allows you to override default locations and set custom wave height constraints (minimum and maximum) that define a 'surfable' day for your skill level.

Use Cases

The skill is built for both proactive and reactive surf planning. Use it to automatically check your local breaks every six hours via the integrated Cron configuration, ensuring you never miss a swell window. When you are planning your week, you can query the agent directly to see if any days meet your criteria. It is particularly useful for surfers who live near multiple breaks and want to avoid the 'desk-to-beach' commute unless the forecast shows clear promise. Debugging tools are provided to help you understand exactly why a specific day did or did not meet your thresholds.

Example Prompts

1. "Check the surf for me—any good days coming up this week at my local spots?"
2. "Why didn't the system notify me about the swell on Saturday?"
3. "Give me a quick update on the current surf forecast for Long Branch."

Tips & Limitations

For the best results, ensure your configuration file contains valid Surfline spot IDs. Remember that weather is inherently unpredictable; the skill uses stricter confidence thresholds for forecasts 4+ days out to minimize 'false positives.' If you find the agent is not reporting a day you think is surfable, use npm run check:debug to view the raw evaluation data. If you ever need to reset the alert memory to see all conditions again, simply delete the data/state.json file to clear the cache.