environment-check

Environment Check & Install

Shared dependency manager for Israel-Agent-Skills. Other skills delegate here when they detect a missing tool, instead of bundling install logic each.

Supported toolchains

Tool	Used by	Install command (Linux/macOS)
playwright (Python) + Chromium	nsc-travel-threat, ben-gurion-flight-board, any browser-driven skill	pipx install playwright && pipx runpip playwright install playwright && playwright install chromium — or pip install --user playwright && python3 -m playwright install chromium
requests	fiber-availability-check, RSS skills	pip install --user requests
pyyaml	skills reading user prefs	pip install --user pyyaml
feedparser	israel-news-rss	pip install --user feedparser

Procedure

1. Detect the runtime. Run python3 -c "import sys; print(sys.executable, sys.version_info[:2])" — that interpreter is the one the plugin's scripts will use (they all use #!/usr/bin/env python3).

2. Probe for the missing dependency. For Python modules:

   python3 -c "import <module>" 2>&1
   

   For Playwright's browser binary specifically (the module-import check is not enough — the Chromium binary is separate):

   python3 -c "from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright; p=sync_playwright().start(); b=p.chromium.launch(headless=True); b.close(); p.stop(); print('ok')"
   

3. If pipx already has the tool but the system python3 doesn't see it (common with playwright), prefer fixing the import path rather than reinstalling. Either install into user-site as well (pip install --user <pkg>), or point PYTHONPATH at the pipx venv site-packages for that one invocation.

4. Confirm with the user before installing anything. Show: what's missing, what command will run, whether it touches user-site (--user) or a system location. Never run sudo pip install.

5. For Playwright browser binaries, respect any existing PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH env var. If the user has one set (check env | grep PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH), use it; otherwise let Playwright use its default (~/.cache/ms-playwright).

6. Verify by re-running the probe after install. Report success or paste the new error.

What this skill does NOT do

• Does not install system packages (apt, brew, dnf) — surface those instructions to the user instead.
• Does not modify shell rc files. If a PATH change is needed, print the line for the user to add.
• Does not manage virtualenvs for the user — the plugin's scripts use whatever python3 is on PATH.

Reporting back to the calling skill

Once the dependency is satisfied, tell the user "you can re-run the [skill] command now" and let the original conversation resume there. Do not chain into the original skill yourself.