GreatPingAsk in plain words
The GreatPing skill lets you tell any agent, in your own words, when to ping you, what to ask you, and when to stay quiet.
greatping setup offers the GreatPing skill to every agent it sets up. A skill is a short instruction an agent reads when it is relevant. With it, you do not need to remember commands: say what you want.
Things you can say
| You say | The agent does |
|---|---|
| "Run the migration on staging and ping me when it's done." | Runs it, then sends you a message with the outcome. |
| "Run the full test suite and tell me only if something fails." | Uses greatping run --on-fail, so you hear only about failures. |
| "I'm going for lunch. If you need a decision, ask me on my phone." | Asks you with ask_user and continues with your answer. |
| "Ask me before you deploy to production." | Sends a Yes/No question and waits for it. |
| "No pings for an hour." | Pauses this computer's alerts for an hour. |
| "You can ping me again." | Resumes alerts. |
| "Is GreatPing set up?" | Checks pairing and integrations and tells you. |
Messages are short and in plain words, such as "Deploy finished: 3 services updated". The skill tells agents never to put secrets, tokens, code or file contents in a message.
What it does not do
- It does not answer the agent's own prompts. A question you answer on your phone through GreatPing is separate from a permission prompt waiting in the agent. Those you answer at the computer.
- It does not alert on its own initiative. Agents use GreatPing only when you ask, or through the automatic hooks.
- It does not pair the computer. If the computer is not paired, the agent tells you to run
greatping loginyourself, since pairing needs your phone.
Without the skill
Leave it out with greatping setup --no-skill. The automatic alerts still work, and agents can still use the MCP tools if you name them.
Where it goes
- Claude Code:
~/.claude/skills/greatping. - Codex:
~/.agents/skills/greatping, which other agents that read~/.agentsuse too. - OpenCode, Pi, Cursor and the Claude Code and Codex plugins carry their own copy.
When a new version of GreatPing brings a new skill, greatping doctor says so and greatping doctor --fix updates it. A copy you edited is left as it is.
Other agents
The skill is also published on its own, so agents GreatPing does not set up can use it. In interactive greatping setup, choose Install the skill with npx skills, or run:
npx skills add nobottomline/greatping --skill greatping --globalUpdate it later with npx skills update greatping --global.