Journey Substrate

This is the optional substrate-linking stage in the Butterbase journey, sitting between deploy and submit. It asks whether you want to connect your deployed app to your substrate so functions get ctx.substrate for AI memory and agent state. The skill handles the whole flow: checks if your substrate is provisioned, calls the right API or MCP tool to link it, verifies the connection, and writes the artifact. It defaults to skip in hackathon mode, which makes sense since most throwaway apps don't need cross-session memory. One good call here is refusing to auto-link without explicit consent, treating substrate as privacy-sensitive rather than just another feature flag.

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last updated: Jun 11, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add butterbase-ai/butterbase-skills --skill journey-substrate --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Journey Substrate Stage (optional)

Connect the deployed app to the owner's substrate so functions get ctx.substrate injected at cold start. Skip if the user has no AI-agent / memory use case.

When to use

Invoke automatically when the journey orchestrator's cursor reaches substrate. The row is optional in the checklist; skip silently if the user declines.

Procedure

Refresh docs. Call butterbase_docs with topic: "substrate". If the plan mentions AI memory / agent state / cross-session knowledge, also WebFetch https://docs.butterbase.ai/substrate. Skip if docs/butterbase/03b-docs-cache.md already covers substrate.
Confirm. Ask the user:

"Connect <app_id> to your substrate? This lets the app's functions read/write your agent memory via ctx.substrate. You can disable later. (yes / skip)"

Default: skip.
On skip: mark the row - [x] substrate (skipped — no agent memory needed) in docs/butterbase/00-state.md. Write docs/butterbase/04b-substrate.md with one line: Skipped on <date>. Return.