Claude Code setup for Apify actors development

This template (download) transforms Apify's monolithic AGENTS.md into a modular Claude Code configuration. You get isolated contexts for different tasks, progressive skill loading, and a one-command deploy workflow that handles building, testing, and deployment automatically.

What's Apify?

Apify is a cloud platform for web scraping. You write "actors" — basically serverless scrapers that run on their infrastructure. They have a nice getting started guide and tons of templates to build from.

The problem with AGENTS.md

Currently, Apify templates are shipped with a generic AGENTS.md file.

Why not keep using the AGENTS.md? The file loads entirely into context as a monolithic document. Claude Code's .claude/ folder offers separation—agents get isolated context, skills load progressively, and commands provide explicit control.

What does this setup do?

Claude Code offers much more fine-tuned configuration than a monolithic AGENTS.md file.

The setup is based on the Crawlee + Playwright + Chrome template, where the original AGENTS.md file is transformed into a specialized Claude Code entities:

• sub-agents
• skills
• commands
• rules
• CLAUDE.md
• .mcp.json with Apify MCP server

The most useful bit is the /deploy-and-get-working slash command. It builds locally, runs a test scrape, pushes to Apify, waits for the build, runs it on the platform, and if anything breaks — it fixes the code and loops until everything works. Basically, you type one command and go grab a coffee.

Downloading and getting started

Download the template: apify-claude.zip

You can also browse the source files on GitHub. The repo will go private later — I want people to link here, not to GitHub.

Setup steps

1. Unzip the downloaded template
2. Create a .env file with APIFY_TOKEN filled in (use .env.template as a reference)
3. Create an actor in the Apify console and configure the actor name and other settings in .actor/actor.json
4. Start Claude Code and run the /deploy-and-get-working slash command — it will push the code to Apify and compile it

Why is this on this website - HTML Washer?

This is the setup used to develop a HTML Washer Apify actor that scrapes and cleans HTML for LLMs.

Next steps

After deployment, customize the agents, skills, and commands in .claude/ to match your scraping needs. The Claude Code documentation has more on extending the configuration.