ActivitySmith CLI

CLI wrapper for the ActivitySmith API using the official Node SDK.

Table of Contents

• Install
• Agent Skill
• Auth
• Push Notifications
  • Send Push Notification
  • Rich Push Notifications with Media
  • Actionable Push Notifications
• Live Activities
  • Start & Update Live Activity
  • End Live Activity
  • Live Activity Action
  • Icons and Badges
  • Live Activity Colors
• Channels
• Widgets
• Aliases
• Content State Options
• Output

Install

npm install -g activitysmith-cli

Agent Skill

The ActivitySmith skill helps coding agents decide when and how to notify you.

Use it for prompts like:

• "Notify me when you're done."
• "Send me a push notification if you get blocked."
• "When the task finishes, the notification tap should run my Test Shortcut."
• "Show progress on my Lock Screen while you work."

The skill maps those requests to the CLI:

• Push Notifications for completion, blockers, and review requests
• shortcuts:// redirection for a specific iPhone Shortcut
• action buttons for follow-up links or Shortcut buttons
• Live Activities for long-running progress
• widget metrics for values that should stay visible

Install the public skill from this repo:

npx -y skills@latest add ActivitySmithHQ/activitysmith-cli --skill activitysmith

Skill path in this repo:

skills/activitysmith

The skill is agent-neutral and recipe-driven. It uses ACTIVITYSMITH_API_KEY auth plus the same CLI commands shown below.

Auth

Set ACTIVITYSMITH_API_KEY or pass --api-key.

For the skill scripts, you can also copy skills/activitysmith/.env.example to skills/activitysmith/.env.

Push Notifications

Run activitysmith --help to inspect available commands.

Send Push Notification

activitysmith push \
  --title "Build Failed 🚨" \
  --message "CI pipeline failed on main branch"

Rich Push Notifications with Media

activitysmith push \
  --title "Homepage ready" \
  --message "Your agent finished the redesign." \
  --media "https://cdn.example.com/output/homepage-v2.png" \
  --redirection "https://github.com/acme/web/pull/482"

Send images, videos, or audio with your push notifications, press and hold to preview media directly from the notification, then tap through to open the linked content.

What will work:

• direct image URL: .jpg, .png, .gif, etc.
• direct audio file URL: .mp3, .m4a, etc.
• direct video file URL: .mp4, .mov, etc.
• URL that responds with a proper media Content-Type, even if the path has no extension

--media can be combined with --redirection, but not with --actions or --actions-file.

Actionable Push Notifications

Push notification --redirection and --actions are optional. Use them to open HTTPS URLs, run a specific iPhone Shortcut with a shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=... URL, or trigger backend webhook workflows. Webhooks are executed by the ActivitySmith backend.

activitysmith push \
  --title "Build Failed 🚨" \
  --message "CI pipeline failed on main branch" \
  --redirection "https://github.com/org/repo/actions/runs/123456789" \
  --actions '[
    {
      "title": "Open Failing Run",
      "type": "open_url",
      "url": "https://github.com/org/repo/actions/runs/123456789"
    },
    {
      "title": "Chat with Jarvis",
      "type": "open_url",
      "url": "shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Jarvis"
    },
    {
      "title": "Create Incident",
      "type": "webhook",
      "url": "https://hooks.example.com/incidents/create",
      "method": "POST",
      "body": {
        "service": "payments-api",
        "severity": "high",
        "source": "activitysmith-cli"
      }
    }
  ]'

You can also load actions from a file:

activitysmith push \
  --title "Build Failed 🚨" \
  --message "CI pipeline failed on main branch" \
  --actions-file "./actions.json"

Live Activities

There are six types of Live Activities:

• stats: best for showing business numbers side by side, such as revenue, sales, new users, conversion, refunds, or any other value you want visible at a glance
• metrics: best for live percentage values that change often, like server CPU, memory usage, disk usage, or error rate
• segmented_progress: best for anything that moves through clear stages, like deployments, onboarding flows, backups, ETL pipelines, migrations, and AI agent runs
• progress: best for tracking real-time progress with percentage, like tasks, backups, migrations, syncs, or uploads
• alert: best for status updates, such as feature adoption, reactivation, onboarding blockers, incidents, escalations, and other operational states
• timer: best for countdowns and elapsed runtime, like benchmark runs, uploads, backups, transcodes, and long-running jobs

Start & Update Live Activity

Use a stable stream_key to identify the metric, job, deployment, or system you want to keep visible. The first activity stream command starts the Live Activity. Later commands with the same stream_key update it.

Stats

activitysmith activity stream sales-hourly \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Sales",
    "subtitle": "last hour",
    "type": "stats",
    "metrics": [
      { "label": "Revenue", "value": "$2430", "color": "blue" },
      { "label": "Orders", "value": "37", "color": "green" },
      { "label": "Conversion", "value": "4.8%", "color": "magenta" },
      { "label": "Avg Order", "value": "$65.68", "color": "yellow" },
      { "label": "Refunds", "value": "$84", "color": "red" },
      { "label": "New Buyers", "value": "18", "color": "cyan" }
    ]
  }'

Metrics

activitysmith activity stream prod-web-1 \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Server Health",
    "subtitle": "prod-web-1",
    "type": "metrics",
    "metrics": [
      { "label": "CPU", "value": 9, "unit": "%" },
      { "label": "MEM", "value": 45, "unit": "%" }
    ]
  }'

Segmented Progress

activitysmith activity stream nightly-backup \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Nightly Backup",
    "subtitle": "upload archive",
    "type": "segmented_progress",
    "numberOfSteps": 3,
    "currentStep": 2
  }'

Progress

activitysmith activity stream search-reindex \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Search Reindex",
    "subtitle": "catalog-v2",
    "type": "progress",
    "percentage": 42
  }'

Alert

activitysmith activity stream customer-ops \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Reactivation",
    "message": "Lumen came back after 2 weeks",
    "type": "alert",
    "icon": {
      "symbol": "cloud.sun",
      "color": "yellow"
    },
    "badge": {
      "title": "Customer",
      "color": "magenta"
    }
  }'

Timer

activitysmith activity stream benchmark-run \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Benchmark Run",
    "subtitle": "sampling",
    "type": "timer",
    "durationSeconds": 300,
    "color": "cyan"
  }'

For a countdown, send duration_seconds. You can update title, subtitle, color, or any other visible field as the work changes. Leave duration_seconds out unless you want to change the timer.

To start at 00:00 and count up, set counts_down: false and leave out duration_seconds.

End Live Activity

Call activity end-stream with the same stream_key to dismiss the Live Activity. You can include final values before it is removed. By default, iOS removes the Live Activity after two minutes. Set autoDismissMinutes to choose a different dismissal time, including 0 for immediate dismissal.

activitysmith activity end-stream prod-web-1 \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Server Health",
    "subtitle": "prod-web-1",
    "type": "metrics",
    "metrics": [
      { "label": "CPU", "value": 7, "unit": "%" },
      { "label": "MEM", "value": 38, "unit": "%" }
    ],
    "autoDismissMinutes": 2
  }'

Live Activity Action

Live Activities can include one optional action button.

• open_url: open an HTTPS URL.
• open_url with a shortcuts:// URL: run an Apple Shortcut, for example to open an app.
• webhook: trigger a backend GET/POST workflow.

Open URL action

activitysmith activity stream prod-web-1 \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Server Health",
    "subtitle": "prod-web-1",
    "type": "metrics",
    "metrics": [
      { "label": "CPU", "value": 76, "unit": "%" },
      { "label": "MEM", "value": 52, "unit": "%" }
    ]
  }' \
  --action '{
    "title": "Dashboard",
    "type": "open_url",
    "url": "https://ops.example.com/servers/prod-web-1"
  }'

Apple Shortcut action

activitysmith activity stream deploy-payments-api \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Deploying payments-api",
    "subtitle": "Running database migrations",
    "type": "segmented_progress",
    "numberOfSteps": 5,
    "currentStep": 3
  }' \
  --action '{
    "title": "Chat with Jarvis",
    "type": "open_url",
    "url": "shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Jarvis"
  }'

Webhook action

activitysmith activity stream search-reindex \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Reindexing product search",
    "subtitle": "Shard 7 of 12",
    "type": "segmented_progress",
    "numberOfSteps": 12,
    "currentStep": 7
  }' \
  --action '{
    "title": "Pause Reindex",
    "type": "webhook",
    "url": "https://ops.example.com/hooks/search/reindex/pause",
    "method": "POST",
    "body": {
      "job_id": "reindex-2026-03-19",
      "requested_by": "activitysmith-cli"
    }
  }'

Icons and Badges

Add more context to Live Activities with icons and badges.

Icon

Supported Live Activity types: stats, metrics, progress, segmented_progress, and alert.

activitysmith activity stream prod-web-1 \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Server Health",
    "subtitle": "prod-web-1",
    "type": "metrics",
    "icon": { "symbol": "server.rack", "color": "blue" },
    "metrics": [
      { "label": "CPU", "value": 18, "unit": "%" },
      { "label": "MEM", "value": 42, "unit": "%" }
    ]
  }'

The icon.symbol value is an Apple SF Symbol name. Browse the catalog with one of these tools:

• ActivitySmith app - Open Settings -> SF Symbols to browse 45 hand-picked icons ready to use
• SF Symbols - Apple's official macOS app
• Interactful - free third-party iOS app listing all SF Symbols under Foundations -> Iconography

Badge

Badges are supported by alert, progress, and segmented_progress Live Activities.

activitysmith activity stream nightly-database-backup \
  --content-state '{
    "title": "Nightly Database Backup",
    "subtitle": "verify restore",
    "type": "progress",
    "badge": { "title": "S3", "color": "cyan" },
    "percentage": 62
  }'

Live Activity Colors

Choose from these colors for the Live Activity accent, including progress bars and action buttons, or apply them to an individual icon or badge:

lime, green, cyan, blue, purple, magenta, red, orange, yellow, gray

Channels

Channels are used to target specific team members or devices. Can be used for both push notifications and live activities.

activitysmith push \
  --title "Build Failed 🚨" \
  --message "CI pipeline failed on main branch" \
  --channels "devs,ops"

Widgets

ActivitySmith lets you display any value on your Lock Screen with widgets - SaaS metrics, revenue, signups, uptime, habits, or anything else you want to track. Create a metric in the web app, then update the metric value using our API, add a widget to your lock screen and it will fetch the latest update automatically.

Use the metric key to update its value.

activitysmith metrics update deploy.success_rate 99.9

String metric values work too.

activitysmith metrics update prod.status healthy

Aliases

The CLI installs two bin names:

• activitysmith (recommended)
• activitysmith-cli (alias)

Content State Options

For activity stream|start|update|end|end-stream, you can pass content state via JSON:

• --content-state <json>
• --content-state-file <path>

For metrics and stats, you can also pass the metrics array directly:

• --metrics <json-array>
• --metrics-file <path>

Or use flags to build the rest of the payload:

• --title <title>
• --subtitle <subtitle>
• --type <type>
• --number-of-steps <number>
• --current-step <number>
• --percentage <number>
• --value <number>
• --upper-limit <number>
• --duration-seconds <number>
• --counts-down <true|false>
• --color <color>
• --step-color <color>
• --auto-dismiss-minutes <number>

For timer, use --duration-seconds for a countdown. To start at 00:00 and count up, use --counts-down false and leave out --duration-seconds.

Live Activity action options:

• --action <json>
• --action-file <path>

Targeting options:

• --channels <comma-separated-slugs> (for push, activity stream, and activity start)

Widget metric options:

• activitysmith metrics update <metric-key> <value>
• activitysmith metric update <metric-key> <value> (alias)

Required fields:

• activity stream: --title, --type, plus --metrics, --number-of-steps and --current-step, --percentage, --value with --upper-limit, or timer fields
• activity start: --title, --type, plus --metrics, --number-of-steps and --current-step, --percentage, --value with --upper-limit, or timer fields
• activity update: --title, plus --metrics, --current-step, --percentage, --value with --upper-limit, or timer fields
• activity end: --title, plus --metrics, --current-step, --percentage, --value with --upper-limit, or timer fields
• activity end-stream: no content state is required, but if you provide one it follows the same rules as activity end

Output

Use --json for machine-readable output.

activitysmith push --title "Hello" --json