casen connector

casen connector has two independent jobs: browse the 116 bundled Camunda 8 out-of-the-box connector templates (search/show — used by the AI generation pipeline to wire a plan step to a real service), and generate brand-new connector element templates from OpenAPI 3.x/Swagger 2.x specs (generate/catalog — for APIs Camunda doesn’t ship a template for).

Commands

casen connector
├── search      — find a bundled OOTB connector template by name/keyword
├── show        — show a bundled template's required/optional inputs
├── generate    — generate new templates from an OpenAPI spec file or catalog entry
└── catalog     — list all built-in OpenAPI-catalog entries (for `generate`)

Browse the bundled OOTB catalog

casen connector search slack
casen connector show io.camunda.connectors.Slack.v1

search scores the 116 bundled templates by keyword match and prints a table (template id, direction, task type, description). show prints a template’s task type, direction, and its required/optional input keys — these are the keys a ProcessPlan connector step’s values object uses (see Building Processes with AI):

$ casen connector show io.camunda.connectors.Slack.v1
Slack connector  (io.camunda.connectors.Slack.v1)
Task type: io.camunda:slack:1
Direction: outbound
Create a channel or send a message to a channel or user

Required inputs:
  token (secret) — OAuth token
  data.channel — Channel/user name/email
  data.text — Message
  ...

A field marked (secret) should be supplied as a {{secrets.NAME}} placeholder, never a literal credential. This is the same catalog @bpmnkit/connectors’ listConnectors()/searchConnectors() expose programmatically.

Generate from the OpenAPI catalog

The fastest way to get started. The catalog contains 30 popular APIs with pre-configured spec URLs and auth defaults:

# List all available catalog entries
casen connector catalog

# Generate templates for the Stripe API
casen connector generate --api stripe --output ./templates/

# Generate templates for GitHub with a custom ID prefix
casen connector generate --api github --id-prefix com.myorg --output ./templates/

Generate from a local file

Pass any local OpenAPI 3.x or Swagger 2.x file in YAML or JSON format:

casen connector generate --swagger ./openapi.yaml --output ./templates/

# JSON format works too
casen connector generate --swagger ./api-spec.json --output ./templates/

All flags

Auth types

Auth is auto-detected from components.securitySchemes in the spec. Use --auth to override.

Common workflows

Preview before writing

Use --dry-run to inspect the generated JSON before committing to files:

casen connector generate --api resend --dry-run

Filter to a subset of operations

Large APIs (GitHub, Stripe) produce hundreds of templates. Use --filter to narrow it down:

# Only generate templates for issue-related operations
casen connector generate --api github --filter "issues" --output ./templates/

# Only POST and PUT operations (filter on summary/operationId)
casen connector generate --api stripe --filter "create|update" --output ./templates/

Expand request body fields

By default the request body is a single FEEL Text field. Use --expand-body to decompose top-level properties into individual typed input fields — useful for simple, well-documented APIs:

casen connector generate --api resend --expand-body --output ./templates/

All templates in one file

casen connector generate --api slack --format array --output ./templates/
# Writes: ./templates/slack.json  (array of all templates)

Override the base URL

Useful when targeting a self-hosted or staging instance:

casen connector generate --swagger ./openapi.yaml \
  --base-url https://staging-api.mycompany.com \
  --output ./templates/

What gets generated

Each operation in the spec becomes one Camunda element template JSON file. The template pre-configures a bpmn:ServiceTask with job type io.camunda:http-json:1 and wires up:

• Method and URL — hidden fixed fields; path parameters become FEEL expressions (e.g. ="https://api.example.com/users/"+userId)
• Path parameters — individual String input fields
• Query parameters — mapped to a FEEL context object
• Headers — mapped to a FEEL context object
• Request body — single FEEL Text field, or individual typed fields with --expand-body
• Authentication — full 5-type auth block with visibility conditions; pre-selected to the detected or specified auth type
• Output mapping, error expression, retries, and timeout — standard connector fields

Import the generated .json files into Camunda Modeler via File → Import Element Templates or by placing them in your .camunda/element-templates/ directory.

Built-in catalog

casen connector catalog

Programmatic usage

The underlying generator is available as a standalone package for use in Node.js scripts and build pipelines. See @bpmnkit/connector-gen.