Our review
Interact with the Zendesk API to read tickets, test connections, list macros, and export ticket data.
Strengths
- Easy setup with environment variables
- Clear and well-documented commands
- Automatic rate limit handling with exponential backoff
- Ticket export with resume capability
Limitations
- Requires a Zendesk API token
- Limited to read-only operations (no ticket creation or modification)
- Depends on Zendesk API availability
When you need quick command-line access to Zendesk ticket data or macros.
If you need to create or modify tickets in a complex manner, or if the Zendesk API is unavailable.
Security analysis
CautionThe skill uses Bash for network operations and file writes, which are powerful tools that could be misused if credentials are compromised. While the commands are read-only and follow Zendesk's API, the reliance on environment variables for authentication poses a risk if the execution environment is not secure.
- •Uses Bash to execute network requests to Zendesk API, which could be exploited if environment variables containing API tokens are leaked or mishandled.
- •Writes to local files (export functionality), potentially storing sensitive ticket data without encryption or access controls.
Examples
Test my Zendesk connection using /zendesk:test/zendesk:read 12345Export 50 tickets from last week using /zendesk:sample-export --limit 50 --since 2026-01-20name: zendesk description: Interact with Zendesk API - read tickets, test connection, export data allowed-tools:
- Bash
- Read
- Write
Zendesk Skills
Tools for interacting with the Zendesk API.
Prerequisites
Set your Zendesk credentials as environment variables:
export ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN=yourcompany # Your Zendesk subdomain
export ZENDESK_EMAIL=you@example.com # Your Zendesk email
export ZENDESK_API_TOKEN=your_token # API token from Zendesk Admin
Get your API token from: Zendesk Admin > Apps and integrations > APIs > Zendesk API
Rate Limits
PortfolioBuilder uses the Enterprise plan (700 requests/minute). The skills include automatic retry with exponential backoff for rate limit handling.
Available Commands
/zendesk:test
Test your Zendesk API connection and credentials.
/zendesk:test
Verifies that your credentials are valid by fetching your user profile.
Success output:
✓ Connected to Zendesk successfully!
Subdomain: yourcompany
User: John Smith (john@example.com)
Role: admin
On error: Shows helpful messages for missing credentials, invalid tokens, or network issues.
/zendesk:read <ticket_id>
Read a Zendesk ticket by ID, displaying ticket details and comments.
/zendesk:read 12345
Fetches the ticket and displays:
- Subject, status, priority
- Created and updated timestamps
- Requester and assignee information
- Full comment thread with authors
Example output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ticket #12345: Help with login issue
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Status: open Priority: high
Created: 2026-01-20 14:30 Updated: 2026-01-24 09:15
Requester: Jane Customer <jane@example.com>
Assignee: Support Agent <support@company.com>
/zendesk:macros [options]
List all Zendesk macros with their actions.
/zendesk:macros # List all macros
/zendesk:macros --active # Show only active macros
/zendesk:macros --json # Output raw JSON for import processing
Options:
--active- Show only active macros--inactive- Show only inactive macros--json- Output raw JSON to stdout--output FILE- Export to file (.json or .yaml/.yml)
File Export:
/zendesk:macros --output macros.json # Export all to JSON
/zendesk:macros --active --output active.yaml # Export active to YAML
Exported files include metadata:
{
"exported_at": "2026-01-24T10:30:00Z",
"count": 47,
"macros": [...]
}
Example output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Zendesk Macros (47 total: 42 active, 5 inactive)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Active] #12345 - Close and thank customer
Actions: Set status=closed, Add comment: "Thank you for..."
[Active] #12346 - Request more information
Actions: Set status=pending, Add comment: "Could you please..."
[Inactive] #12347 - Old workflow macro
Actions: Set status=open, Set tags: legacy
/zendesk:sample-export [options]
Export tickets using the Incremental Exports API for migration validation.
/zendesk:sample-export # Export 100 tickets from last 30 days
/zendesk:sample-export --limit 50 # Export 50 tickets
/zendesk:sample-export --since 2026-01-01 # From specific date
Options:
--limit N- Maximum tickets to export (default: 100)--since DATE- Start date in YYYY-MM-DD format (default: 30 days ago)--output FILE- Output file (default: sample-export-YYYYMMDD.json)--validate- Run data completeness validation after export--resume- Resume from last saved cursor file--resume-from FILE- Resume from specific cursor file
Output files:
sample-export-YYYYMMDD.json- Tickets with metadatasample-export-YYYYMMDD.cursor- Cursor for resumability testing
Example output:
Exporting tickets via Incremental API...
Start date: 2026-01-01
Limit: 100 tickets
Fetching page 1... 100 tickets
✓ Exported 100 tickets to sample-export-20260124.json
Cursor saved to: sample-export-20260124.cursor
Date range: 2026-01-01 to 2026-01-24
Status: More tickets available (limit reached)
Validation mode (--validate):
Checks data completeness for migration planning:
- Fetches comments for each ticket
- Validates attachment URLs are accessible
- Reports custom fields present
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Data Completeness Validation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Tickets exported: 100
Comments:
✓ All 100 tickets have comments fetched
Total comments: 847
Avg per ticket: 8.5
Attachments:
✓ 156 attachments found
✓ All 156 URLs verified accessible
Custom Fields:
✓ 12 custom field IDs found with values
Tickets with custom field data: 85 of 100
✓ No issues found - data appears complete
Resume mode (--resume):
Continue an interrupted export from the saved cursor:
/zendesk:sample-export --limit 50 # Export first 50
/zendesk:sample-export --limit 50 --resume # Export next 50
/zendesk:sample-export --resume-from sample-export.cursor # From specific cursor
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