setting-up-relayfile

Overview

Relayfile mounts a provider (Notion, Linear, Slack, GitHub, and other adapter-backed integrations) as ordinary files on disk so an agent can read and write through the filesystem instead of calling APIs. This skill is the canonical setup recipe. Follow it top-to-bottom for first-time setup; jump to Recovering from breakage if a working mount has gone wrong.

When to use this skill

• An agent needs read access to a provider (e.g., "summarize this Notion database").
• An agent needs to write back to a provider (e.g., "post a review on this Notion page", "update this Linear issue").
• A human is setting up a mount before delegating work to an agent.
• A mount stopped reflecting changes and you need to diagnose where.

What you get

After setup, files appear under <local-dir>/<provider>/...:

~/relayfile-mount/notion/
├── databases/
│   ├── <slug>--<id>/
│   │   ├── metadata.json     ← database schema (read-only)
│   │   └── pages/
│   │       ├── <slug>--<id>.json     ← page metadata
│   │       └── <slug>--<id>/
│   │           ├── content.md        ← page body (READ + WRITE)
│   │           └── blocks/<id>.json  ← raw Notion block tree
└── pages/                            ← top-level pages (not in a database)

Prerequisites

• Recent relayfile CLI on $PATH. Verify: relayfile --help should list setup, integration, writeback, and the integration available / integration search / integration set-metadata subcommands.
• A modern macOS or Linux shell with jq for JSON inspection. AWS CLI access is optional and only needed for internal cloud log diagnostics.
• Network access to agentrelay.com/cloud (cloud control plane), api.relayfile.dev (relayfile API), connect.nango.dev (Nango OAuth), and Composio connect endpoints when using --backend composio.

Step 1 — Run setup (interactive happy path)

```bash

relayfile setup \
  --provider notion \
  --workspace my-agent \
  --local-dir ~/relayfile-mount \
  --no-open

Step 2 — Verify the mount is healthy

```bash

relayfile status my-agent

Step 3 — Hand off to an agent

Pattern A: local agent (Claude Code, scripts, Cursor)

export RELAYFILE_LOCAL_DIR=~/relayfile-mount
# point Claude Code at the dir or `cd` in

Pattern B: remote agent / SDK access (no disk mirror)

import { RelayFileClient } from '@relayfile/sdk';

const token = process.env.RELAYFILE_TOKEN; // from ~/.relayfile/credentials.json
const client = new RelayFileClient({ token, server: 'https://api.relayfile.dev' });

// Read
const file = await client.getFile('rw_xxxxxxxx', '/notion/pages/xxx/content.md');

// Write — triggers writeback automatically
await client.putFile('rw_xxxxxxxx', '/notion/pages/xxx/content.md', {
  content: '# New body\n\n…',
  contentType: 'text/markdown',
});

Step 4 — Verify writeback works (optional but recommended)

Skip-able if the agent only reads. Required if the agent will write.

echo "[writeback test $(date -u +%FT%TZ)]" > ~/relayfile-mount/notion/pages/<throwaway-page>/content.md

Discover writeback contracts before writing

Do not guess writeback shapes and do not use a magic new.json filename. Current relayfile adapters ship discovery documents for writable resources:

<provider>/
├── .adapter.md                         ← adapter overview, operations, ID patterns
└── <resource>/
    ├── .schema.json                    ← full-record JSON Schema, draft 2020-12
    └── .create.example.json            ← minimal create payload

Path conventions per provider

new.json is not special in the file-native adapter contract. If a current .adapter.md and .schema.json are present, translate older examples using /messages/new.json or /comments/new.json to "write the create payload to any non-canonical filename in the resource directory." If the live mount only exposes new.json, treat that as an older deployment surface and follow the mounted template or wait for the workspace to refresh onto the new adapter version.

<local-dir>/.relay/ is reserved — never write there. Anything you put under it gets ignored or treated as daemon state.

Adding more integrations after setup

Do not guess provider names. Ask the CLI for the live catalog first; it pulls static Relayfile integrations plus dynamic Nango providers and Composio toolkits from the cloud, then caches the result locally.

relayfile integration available --refresh
relayfile integration search docker --backend composio --refresh
relayfile integration available --backend nango --search notion

Common gotchas

G2 — OAuth callback timing trap

curl -sS -X POST "https://agentrelay.com/cloud/api/v1/workspaces/<id>/integrations/connect-session" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat ~/.relayfile/credentials.json | jq -r .token)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"allowedIntegrations":["notion"]}'

G3 — Dynamic provider discovery and Composio names

relayfile integration search <term> --backend composio --refresh
relayfile integration search <term> --backend nango --refresh

G4 — Jira / Confluence sync says cloudId is missing

relayfile integration connect jira --workspace my-agent --no-open
# or, if you know the target site:
relayfile integration set-metadata jira cloudId=<cloud-id> baseUrl=https://<site>.atlassian.net --workspace my-agent --yes

G6 — Mount mirror dir conventions

<local-dir>/
├── <provider>/...                     ← actual files
├── .relay/
│   ├── state.json                     ← daemon's live state (workspaceId, lag, counters, remoteRoot)
│   ├── integrations/<provider>.json   ← per-integration metadata
│   ├── dead-letter/<opId>.json        ← failed writebacks (Phase 1 dead-letter)
│   ├── permissions-denied.log         ← read/write denials preserved for diagnosis
│   ├── disconnected/<provider>.json   ← marker after `integration disconnect`
│   └── conflicts/<resolved-conflicts>
└── .relayfile-mount-state.json        ← sync revisions per file

Recovering from breakage

Symptom: file edits don't appear in the provider

relayfile writeback status my-agent --json | jq

Symptom: cloud run marked FAILED but the handler logged runner.handler.ok

{ "message": "relayfile.mount.cleanup", "flushExitCode": 124, "killAttempted": true, "killExitCode": 0 }

Cleaning up

When you're done with a mount and want to tear down:

# 1. stop the daemon
relayfile stop my-agent

# 2. disconnect each integration (revokes OAuth, removes <provider>/ tree)
relayfile integration disconnect notion --workspace my-agent --yes

# 3. remove the local workspace registration
relayfile workspace delete my-agent --yes

# 4. delete the mirror dir
rm -rf ~/relayfile-mount

What this skill does NOT cover

• Self-hosted relayfile (running your own relayfile-server Go binary against a private Nango). For most agent use-cases the managed cloud at agentrelay.com is the right choice; self-hosted is for environments where data residency rules out the cloud.
• Multi-workspace agents. A single agent talking to multiple workspaces simultaneously needs careful token handling that's out of scope here.
• GitHub-via-relayfile for source code. The GitHub adapter exists but the productized cloud-mount workflow is heavier-weight than git clone; only use it if the agent specifically benefits from filesystem-shaped access to PR metadata, reviews, etc.

Quick reference