Mailchimp

Use this skill for Mailchimp Marketing and Mailchimp Transactional work: audience/list inspection, subscriber lookup and controlled mutations, tags, merge fields, campaign draft operations, campaign content, scheduling/sending, campaign reports, automation and journey readouts, and Mandrill transactional message lookup or sends.

Default Workflow

1. Start with credential-check when setup is uncertain. The helper emits gateway-resolved <env:...> and <secret:...> placeholders; it does not read runtime env or secret values itself. Missing MAILCHIMP_SERVER_PREFIX, MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_BASIC_AUTH, MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_OAUTH_TOKEN, or MANDRILL_API_KEY is surfaced by the gateway placeholder resolver or by a 401/403 upstream response. Do not run hybridclaw secret list, hybridclaw env list, grep, or local file inspection from the agent sandbox to decide whether Mailchimp values are configured; those checks can see the wrong runtime surface. For stored OAuth access tokens, use oauth metadata --auth oauth to retrieve the account-specific API endpoint and set MAILCHIMP_SERVER_PREFIX from the returned API endpoint host.
2. Use mailchimp.cjs noun/verb commands for live work. Normal commands send the helper-built request through the HybridClaw gateway /api/http/request path, so the gateway resolves <env:...> and <secret:...> placeholders server-side. Use --request only for dry-run/debug output; do not normally reconstruct or relay httpRequest objects with the built-in http_request tool.
3. Treat MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_BASIC_AUTH, MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_OAUTH_TOKEN, and MANDRILL_API_KEY as SecretRefs only. Never ask the operator to paste tokens into chat, never print raw Authorization headers, and never include Mandrill keys in --body-json.
4. For audience writes, bulk subscriber plans, campaign draft/content writes, campaign schedule/send, and Mandrill sends, first run approval-plan, show the preview, and stop. After explicit operator approval for the named audience, campaign, or message target, run the approved helper command unchanged.
5. For 401 or 403, stop after the first failure and ask the operator to verify the token, user role, Transactional provisioning, and data-center prefix. Do not retry with broader permissions.
6. For 429, report rate-limit guidance from Retry-After or Mailchimp rate-limit headers when present. Do not start retry loops.
7. Minimize subscriber PII in summaries. Prefer subscriber hashes for lookup and archive/tag operations. Include email addresses only when required to create or update a member.

Command Contract

Use the standard helper shape:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs [--format json|pretty] [--request] <resource> <action> [flags]
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs [--format json|pretty] approval-plan <resource> <action> [flags]

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --help
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json credential-check
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json oauth metadata --auth oauth
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json --request oauth metadata --auth oauth

Run Marketing reads:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json marketing root
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json audience list --count 25
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json audience members --list-id <list-id> --status subscribed
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json audience member --list-id <list-id> --email user@example.com
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json audience merge-fields --list-id <list-id>

Run guarded audience mutations only after approval:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan audience member-upsert \
  --list-id <list-id> --email user@example.com --status-if-new pending \
  --merge-fields-json '{"FNAME":"Ada"}' --tag customer:active

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan audience tags-update \
  --list-id <list-id> --email user@example.com --tag vip:active --tag stale:inactive

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan audience member-archive \
  --list-id <list-id> --email user@example.com

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan audience bulk-plan \
  --list-id <list-id> --operation member-upsert --count 2500 \
  --source-label imports/2026-06-newsletter.csv \
  --sample-json '{"email":"user@example.com","status_if_new":"pending","FNAME":"Ada"}'

Run campaign requests:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign list --status save
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan campaign create --body-json '{"type":"regular","recipients":{"list_id":"<list-id>"},"settings":{"subject_line":"Subject","title":"Draft","from_name":"Team","reply_to":"team@example.com"}}'
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan campaign content-set --campaign-id <campaign-id> --body-json '{"html":"<p>Hello</p>"}'
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan campaign schedule --campaign-id <campaign-id> --schedule-time 2026-06-01T09:00:00+00:00
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan campaign send --campaign-id <campaign-id>

Run report and read-only automation/journey requests:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign report --campaign-id <campaign-id> --kind overview
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign report --campaign-id <campaign-id> --kind bounces
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign report --campaign-id <campaign-id> --kind opens
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign report --campaign-id <campaign-id> --kind clicks
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json campaign report --campaign-id <campaign-id> --kind email-activity
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json automation list
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json journey list

Run Mandrill transactional requests:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json mandrill message-info --id <message-id>
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan mandrill send --body-json '{"message":{"from_email":"ops@example.com","to":[{"email":"user@example.com","type":"to"}],"subject":"Receipt","text":"Thanks"}}'
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json approval-plan mandrill send-template --body-json '{"template_name":"receipt","template_content":[],"message":{"to":[{"email":"user@example.com","type":"to"}],"merge":true}}'

Classify a saved or live error:

node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json classify-response --status 401 --body-json '{"title":"API Key Invalid"}'
node skills/mailchimp/mailchimp.cjs --format json classify-response --gateway-error 'Stored secret MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_BASIC_AUTH is not set.'

Approval And Safety Boundaries

Green operations are read-only inventory, lookup, report, automation, journey, and message-status calls. Amber operations mutate external Mailchimp state but do not send mail by themselves. Red operations can send or schedule external email and require explicit operator approval for the named campaign or message target.

--operator-grant is an approval-workflow marker for this helper, not an access-control boundary. The gateway approval policy, network policy, and credential resolver remain the actual enforcement layers for external writes and sends.

Bulk member mutation is intentionally exposed as a preview/approval boundary, not as a direct batch execution command. For more than one subscriber, run approval-plan audience bulk-plan with the target list, operation, source label, count, and a redacted sample row. After approval, generate exact per-member helper commands and run them with --operator-grant. Do not call Mailchimp batch endpoints from this skill.

Unsupported destructive operations include permanent member deletion, campaign delete, audience delete, and Mandrill scheduled-message cancel/reschedule. The helper exposes archive and tag changes, not irreversible data deletion.

Credential Notes

Mailchimp Marketing uses https://<dc>.api.mailchimp.com/3.0, where <dc> is the data-center subdomain for the account. API keys usually include this as the suffix after the last hyphen. The helper defaults to --auth api-key, which uses Authorization: Basic <secret:MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_BASIC_AUTH> and https://<env:MAILCHIMP_SERVER_PREFIX>.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/... so the gateway resolves both values server-side. Store the secret value as the base64 encoding of anystring:<api-key>, not the raw API key in prompt text.

OAuth access tokens are supported with --auth oauth and Authorization: OAuth <secret:MAILCHIMP_MARKETING_OAUTH_TOKEN>. This skill uses an already stored OAuth access token; it does not perform the browser OAuth authorization flow itself. Use oauth metadata --auth oauth to read the OAuth token metadata endpoint and derive the account-specific data-center prefix before calling Marketing API endpoints.

Mandrill requests place key: "<secret:MANDRILL_API_KEY>" in the JSON body so the gateway performs placeholder replacement server-side. Do not include a key field in --body-json; the helper rejects it.

Result Handling

Base answers on successful live API results only. For setup failures, report which layer failed: missing MAILCHIMP_SERVER_PREFIX, gateway missing runtime secret, gateway policy denial, outbound network failure, Mailchimp 401/403, Mailchimp 429, or upstream validation error. Do not infer stale gateway state or network isolation without checking hybridclaw gateway status, logs, and the returned helper/gateway error body.