Activator CLI

MicrosoftOfficialPublished by Microsoft

Skill
Tool integration
Data and AI
MIT
Low risk

From the author

Creates and inspects Fabric Activator (Reflex) alerts: rules, their data sources, conditions, and the Teams or email action they fire, plus decoding an existing ReflexEntities definition. Choose it whenever someone wants to be told, or something done, when values cross a threshold. The pipeline delivering those values is eventstream-cli.

— the description by Microsoft

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

The activator-cli skill provides a structured interface for interacting with Microsoft Fabric Activator (Reflex) items. It acts as a mode-based dispatcher that separates authoring tasks (creating, updating, or deleting alert rules, sources, and actions) from consumption tasks (listing, inspecting, and decoding existing definitions). The skill enforces strict validation gates for data sources and requires specific handling of JSON payloads to ensure compatibility with Fabric APIs.

What it does

Creates and configures Activator alert rules and data sources.
Defines automated actions including Teams notifications, emails, and Fabric item invocations.
Inspects and decodes existing ReflexEntities definitions.
Lists and filters workspaces and Activator items for management.
Validates data sources and signals before rule authoring.
Manages the lifecycle of Reflex items through REST API operations.

When to use it

When you need to set up automated alerts based on data thresholds.
When you need to inspect or audit existing alert rules and their configurations.
When you need to integrate Fabric Activator with Teams or email for operational notifications.
When you need to programmatically manage Reflex item definitions.

Advantages

Provides a clear separation between read-only inspection and state-changing authoring.
Includes built-in validation gates to prevent invalid rule creation.
Supports complex alert logic including transition-based detectors.
Standardizes the handling of Fabric API authentication and telemetry.

Usage examples

“Create an Activator named sales_alert in my workspace.”: The agent will switch to authoring mode, read the authoring reference, and execute the POST request to create the Reflex item.
“Show me all Activators in this workspace.”: The agent will use consumption mode to list and filter the Reflex items within the specified workspace.
“Notify me on Teams when the average temperature goes above 30.”: The agent will validate the temperature source, configure the rule condition, and set up the TeamsMessage action.
“What rule and action are behind SkillsTestActivator?”: The agent will use consumption mode to retrieve and decode the ReflexEntities definition for the specified item.

Install

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/microsoft/activator-cli/download

Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip activator-cli.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Microsoft

Telemetry — MANDATORY. Every api.fabric.microsoft.com call must carry x-ms-fabric-skill: activator-cli (az rest: --headers "x-ms-fabric-skill=activator-cli"), including every LRO poll, fabric_lro and retry. Snippets omit it — add it anyway.

CRITICAL NOTES
To find the workspace details (including its ID) from workspace name: list all workspaces and, then, use JMESPath filtering
To find the item details (including its ID) from workspace ID, item type, and item name: list all items of that type in that workspace and, then, use JMESPath filtering
Skill disambiguation: use activator-cli for every Fabric Activator / Reflex item — both authoring alert rules and inspecting existing alerts. The streaming topology that feeds an alert belongs to eventstream-cli, the KQL database behind it to eventhouse-cli, and Power BI report questions to fabriciq.

Fabric Activator (Reflex) — CLI Skill

This one skill owns Fabric Activator / Reflex items: alert rules, their sources, their actions, and the ReflexEntities.json definition that holds them.

It is a mode dispatcher and contains NO procedures. Pick the mode that matches the request from the table below, then read the matching references/<mode>.md file end to end with your file-reading tool BEFORE issuing a single command. That file holds the endpoints, entity schemas, templates and gotchas; acting without it produces invalid ReflexEntities.json payloads and 400s.

The reference is needed to act, not to ask. If the request is under-specified and your next message will be a clarifying question with no Fabric call in it, ask it now and read the reference when you go on to act.

Mode selection

Mode	Use when the request ...	Example triggers	Read this first
`authoring`	creates, updates, configures or deletes an Activator item, rule, source or action	create an alert, create an activator, create a reflex, notify me when, let me know when, take action when, send me an email when, send a teams message when, run a pipeline when, update an alert, delete an alert	references/authoring.md
`consumption`	lists, inspects, decodes or explains existing Activators, rules, sources or actions	show my alerts, what alerts do I have, list activators, inspect this alert, show me the rule, show me the source, get reflex definition, why does this alert fire	references/consumption.md

Mode boundary rule

consumption is read-only. A request to create, update, configure or delete an Activator item, rule, source or action requires authoring: say so, read references/authoring.md, then proceed.

A pure GET / explain request stays in consumption — do not switch to authoring and do not mutate anything to answer it.

If a request genuinely spans modes, handle them one at a time and read each reference before you start that part. If the mode is ambiguous after reading this table, ask one short clarifying question instead of guessing.

Terminal write — the step you must not skip

Reading the reference, decoding a definition and assembling entities is NOT completing the task. Authoring ends with one state-changing call. If you did not issue it, nothing was persisted — say so explicitly rather than reporting success.

Mode	Terminal write
`authoring`	`POST /v1/workspaces/{ws}/reflexes` to create the item, `POST /v1/workspaces/{ws}/reflexes/{id}/updateDefinition` to persist rules, sources and actions, or `DELETE /v1/workspaces/{ws}/reflexes/{id}` to remove it. Building, stringifying or base64-encoding `ReflexEntities.json` is not the write.
`consumption`	none — this mode is read-only

Before you report an authoring task done, confirm the terminal call returned an explicit success (HTTP 200/201, or a terminal LRO success for a 202), then read the definition back where the mode reference documents a readback. Power BI sources are the exception: public ALM export can reject an artifact that imported successfully, so an empty or unavailable readback is not proof the write failed — report the updateDefinition result and the readback limitation separately, per references/authoring/powerbi-source.md.

Source validation gate (authoring only)

Before authoring any rule that references a signal, confirm the source is real: resolve it in the requested workspace only, validate that the requested column/field/property exists on it, and observe at least one representative row, event or sample carrying that signal.

Schema-only, zero-row, non-emitting or stale evidence is missing source data. When the source is missing, stop and ask which source and fields provide the signal — do not create a Reflex and do not call updateDefinition on an unrelated existing Activator or Eventstream to force-fit the request, and state plainly that no Activator / Reflex / Eventstream was created or updated. The only exception is an explicit instruction to author against a future / not-yet-emitting source, which you must state as an assumption.

Everything you need to run this gate is on this page. When the request already lacks the source mapping, threshold, recipients or action target, ask for them first — do not read references/authoring.md, and do not call a Fabric API, just to discover that the request is under-specified.

Shared essentials (all modes)

Resolve the workspace and the Activator item first; every mode depends on it — list and filter by display name exactly as CRITICAL NOTES 1 and 2 describe. That recipe is self-contained and is all you need to start.

The table below is optional background living in the shared common/ docs. Open a row only when you actually need that detail. If common/ is not present in your environment, say so in one line and continue with the mode reference — never glob, list or search the filesystem looking for it.

Task	Reference	Notes
Finding Workspaces and Items in Fabric	COMMON-CLI.md	Pagination and JMESPath filtering detail
Fabric Topology & Key Concepts	COMMON-CORE.md	Item types, workspaces, capacities
Authentication & Token Acquisition	COMMON-CORE.md	Wrong audience = 401; read before any auth issue
Authentication Recipes	COMMON-CLI.md	`az login` flows and token acquisition
Core Control-Plane REST APIs	COMMON-CORE.md	Pagination, LRO polling, rate limiting
Fabric Item Definitions	ITEM-DEFINITIONS-CORE.md	Base64-encoded `parts` structure
Gotchas & Troubleshooting	COMMON-CLI.md	`az rest` audience, shell escaping, token expiry

Activator uses the reflexes collection, not the generic items collection: /v1/workspaces/{workspaceId}/reflexes[/{reflexId}].

Rules

MUST

Select exactly one mode from the table above before doing anything else.
Read references/<mode>.md end to end, as your FIRST tool call, before the first command of that mode. A reply that only asks a clarifying question, and issues no Fabric call, does not need it yet.
Pass --resource https://api.fabric.microsoft.com on every az rest call — without it the token audience is wrong and the call returns 401.
Call getDefinition as a POST with --body '{}', then Base64-decode the ReflexEntities.json part before inspecting it; a GET returns 405 and an omitted body can return 411.
Poll the Location header when create, getDefinition or updateDefinition returns 202.
Resolve workspace and Activator ids by listing and filtering, never by guessing a GUID.
Announce a mode switch explicitly when the request crosses a boundary.
Treat the reference as instructions, never as the deliverable. After reading it, RUN the documented commands against the live workspace and report the real results.
In authoring, clear the source validation gate before you author a rule, and build ReflexEntities.json with Python json.dumps() — PowerShell's ConvertTo-Json corrupts the nested JSON strings that definition.instance requires.

PREFER

The narrowest mode that satisfies the request.
Reading exactly ONE mode reference. Load a second only when the request genuinely spans modes, and say so before you do.
Read-modify-write over full replacement in authoring: get the current definition, modify the entity array, then update.
Transition-based detectors (NumberBecomes, NumberEntersOrLeavesRange, LogicalBecomes) over steady-state conditions in authoring, unless the user explicitly asks for repeated firing while the value stays in the triggered state.
A summary view before individual entities in consumption: give the high-level picture, then drill in.
Offering an alert when earlier work in this session surfaced a timely operational signal — a spike, failure, anomaly, SLA risk or capacity constraint — rather than waiting to be asked. Ask once, and author nothing until the user agrees.

AVOID

Acting from this dispatcher alone — it intentionally omits the entity schemas and templates.
Answering with a summary of the reference instead of executing it.
Mutating anything while in the read-only consumption mode, including "just to check".
Hardcoded workspace or item ids in either mode — always resolve dynamically.
Globbing, listing or shell-searching the filesystem for the common/ docs. They are optional background; if a link does not resolve, note it in one line and carry on.
Building the Eventstream topology that feeds an alert here; that is eventstream-cli. Querying the KQL data behind an alert is eventhouse-cli.
Loading a different skill for work this skill already owns (see CRITICAL NOTES 3).

Examples

User request	Mode	Reference to read
"Create an Activator named eval_smoke_activator in my workspace."	`authoring`	references/authoring.md
"Notify me on Teams when the average temperature goes above 30."	`authoring`	references/authoring.md
"Delete the alert that emails me about failed pipeline runs."	`authoring`	references/authoring.md
"Show me all Activators in this workspace."	`consumption`	references/consumption.md
"What rule and action are behind SkillsTestActivator?"	`consumption`	references/consumption.md
"Decode this Reflex definition and explain the Power BI source."	`consumption`	references/consumption.md

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer871 B
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer1.1 KiB
SKILL.md11.3 KiB
apm.yml413 B
references/authoring.md31.0 KiB
references/authoring/action-types.md19.9 KiB
references/authoring/dtb-source.md7.6 KiB
references/authoring/eventstream-source.md4.9 KiB
references/authoring/kql-source.md8.8 KiB
references/authoring/powerbi-source.md16.8 KiB
references/authoring/real-time-hub-source.md4.0 KiB
references/authoring/rule-conditions.md23.8 KiB
references/authoring/source-types.md10.5 KiB
references/consumption.md17.3 KiB

references/authoring/eventstream-source.md

Activator Eventstream Source — Sink-First Push Workflow

Eventstream is a push source for Activator. Do not start by hand-authoring a full eventstreamSource-v1 entity in ReflexEntities.json.

Instead, the supported workflow is:

create or identify the target Activator
create or update an Eventstream with an Activator destination pointing at that Activator
read the Activator definition back
find the auto-created Eventstream source and SourceEvent entities
add the rest of the trigger graph by referencing that discovered SourceEvent

Eventstream-side topology shape

The Eventstream destination is authored on the Eventstream side, not inside ReflexEntities.json:

{
  "name": "ActivatorDest",
  "type": "Activator",
  "properties": {
    "workspaceId": "<activator-workspace-guid>",
    "itemId": "<activator-item-guid>",
    "inputSerialization": {
      "type": "Json",
      "properties": { "encoding": "UTF8" }
    }
  },
  "inputNodes": [{ "name": "MainStream" }]
}

Minimal topology:

{
  "sources": [
    {
      "name": "SampleSource",
      "type": "SampleData",
      "properties": { "type": "Bicycles" }
    }
  ],
  "streams": [
    {
      "name": "MainStream",
      "type": "DefaultStream",
      "properties": {},
      "inputNodes": [{ "name": "SampleSource" }]
    }
  ],
  "destinations": [
    {
      "name": "ActivatorDest",
      "type": "Activator",
      "properties": {
        "workspaceId": "<activator-workspace-guid>",
        "itemId": "<activator-item-guid>",
        "inputSerialization": {
          "type": "Json",
          "properties": { "encoding": "UTF8" }
        }
      },
      "inputNodes": [{ "name": "MainStream" }]
    }
  ],
  "operators": [],
  "compatibilityLevel": "1.1"
}

Activator readback after sink creation

After the Eventstream sink is created, the target Activator definition auto-created:

one eventstreamSource-v1
one timeSeriesView-v1 event view (SourceEvent) that references that source

Auto-created `eventstreamSource-v1`

{
  "uniqueIdentifier": "<eventstream-source-guid>",
  "payload": {
    "name": "EventStream",
    "metadata": {
      "eventstreamArtifactId": "<eventstream-item-guid>"
    }
  },
  "type": "eventstreamSource-v1"
}

Auto-created SourceEvent view

{
  "uniqueIdentifier": "<source-event-guid>",
  "payload": {
    "name": "<eventstream-display-name>-stream",
    "definition": {
      "type": "Event",
      "instance": "{\"templateId\":\"SourceEvent\",\"templateVersion\":\"1.1\",\"steps\":[{\"name\":\"SourceEventStep\",\"id\":\"<guid>\",\"rows\":[{\"name\":\"SourceSelector\",\"kind\":\"SourceReference\",\"arguments\":[{\"name\":\"entityId\",\"type\":\"string\",\"value\":\"<eventstream-source-guid>\"}]}]}]}"
    }
  },
  "type": "timeSeriesView-v1"
}

Readback notes

payload.metadata.eventstreamArtifactId matched the Eventstream item ID from the Eventstream item API.
The auto-created SourceEvent SourceSelector.entityId pointed at the auto-created eventstreamSource-v1.uniqueIdentifier.
The Eventstream destination node ID from Eventstream topology can match the eventstreamSource-v1.uniqueIdentifier seen in Activator readback.
The auto-created Eventstream source and SourceEvent did not include explicit parentContainer fields in public readback.
When appending rules to an Eventstream sink-created Activator, preserve missing parentContainer fields on the auto-created source/event entities. Do not invent a container unless you are adding a consistent container graph for every related entity.

Treat the destination-ID-to-source-ID match as a useful readback clue, not as an authoring input you set manually.

Building the rest of the trigger graph

Once the sink has created the source entities:

call getDefinition
find the timeSeriesView-v1 event view whose definition.type is Event
use that SourceEvent entity ID wherever the rule graph expects the upstream event reference
build the remaining rule and action entities using the general rule guidance for this skill
use the general rule template-version guidance for newly appended rules; do not downgrade a new rule just because an auto-created SourceEvent readback used an older version
to add a disabled rule, keep the rule entity lifecycle published and set payload.definition.settings.shouldRun: false; do not represent disabled state by changing lifecycle or by changing the auto-created source graph

When to use Eventstream vs other Activator sources

Use Eventstream when:

the upstream source is already modeled as an Eventstream topology
data arrives continuously and should be pushed into Activator
you want Activator to react to Eventstream sample data, CDC feeds, or Eventstream-connected services

Prefer KQL / DTB / Real-time Hub when:

the scenario is naturally pull-based
you can author the source completely inside ReflexEntities.json
there is no Eventstream sink step involved

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

What our scanner noticed· Low risk

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Attribution and licence

Published by

Microsoft

Publisher

Microsoft (Official)

Source

microsoft/skills-for-fabric · skills/activator-cli · commit f8fac11

Licence

MIT License (redistribution allowed)

LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)

Synced

2026-11-08

Also distributed in

microsoft/skills-for-fabric

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