Operate MIMIC Simulator in Plain English with Claude Code Skills

 

 

 

 

 

If you run MIMIC Simulator in your lab, you already know its interfaces: the MIMICview GUI, the WebUI, mimicsh, 

and the programming APIs. Now there is one more -- and it speaks your language. With the new MIMIC Skills for 

Claude Code, you state your intent in natural language (English, or any other):  for example "start agents 1-100 

with a warm-up delay", "why is throughput down since yesterday?", "zeige mir die aktivsten Agenten", "make 

agent 5 export IPFIX to my collector", ... Claude translates it into the right MIMIC API calls, runs them, and 

shows you exactly what it did.

 

1. What the Skills Are

 

Claude Code Skills are structured instruction packages that Claude reads at invocation time. The MIMIC skill

package turns Claude into a capable MIMIC operator by pairing an orchestrating skill with a bundled knowledge 

base of the MIMIC API surface and object model. The package currently contains three skills:

 

1. mimic -- the core operator skill: configuration, agent lifecycle, runtime simulation changes, troubleshooting --  

    any operation the installed MIMIC APIs expose;

 

2. mimic-diagnostics -- an add-on performance analyst: captures mimicd's built-in instrumentation over time and answers 

    "why is it slow, and what is the bottleneck?";

 

3. mimic-netflow -- an add-on flow-export operator: configures and drives NetFlow (v5/v9/v10-IPFIX) and sFlow sources on 

    your simulated agents, pointed at your collector.

The design goal is generality, not a fixed menu of workflows. Because the skill carries the API knowledge base 

rather than a list of canned recipes, it allows you to quickly become productive with MIMIC and handles any operations 

you may want to do.

 

2. Safe by Design

 

The skills are entirely optional and non-invasive. They require no changesto your MIMIC configuration, running processes, 

or workflows -- your installation behaves identically whether or not the skills are installed.

Key guarantees:

* Claude operates MIMIC only through its APIs -- it never edits files
   under the install area, never kills processes, even if asked;
 

* MIMIC remains multi-user: a colleague can drive the GUI, WebUI, or a
   CLI on the same instance at the same time, and the skill interoperates
   with state it did not create;
 

* inverse-action undo lets you back out of a change;
 

* an opt-in audit log keeps a durable record of everything the skill did.

 

3. Learn MIMIC by Watching

 

A secondary goal shaped the whole design: transparency. Every operation is echoed as the underlying API call before 

it runs, with a brief explanation, so you see not just the result but HOW it was done. Engineers new to a corner of 

MIMIC -- say, the flow-export configuration keys -- pick it up simply by watching the skill work. The skill is also aware 

of the MIMIC documentation, both your local install's help and the cloud docs, and presents the relevant pages on request.

 

4. Diagnose Performance in a Conversation

 

The mimic-diagnostics add-on shows what this looks like for a harder task. For example, instead of manually 

collecting profiling dumps and eyeballing counters, you say "profile the daemon for the next ten minutes and tell

me where the CPU is going." The skill:

 

* captures a time series of mimicd's built-in instrumentation (no daemon
   changes needed -- capturing is effectively read-only);

* reads each dump as rates and per-thread CPU against a model of mimicd's
   internal pipeline;
* reports the bottleneck -- throughput, latency, lock contention,
   per-request cost -- and compares against a known-good baseline if you
   have one.

 

5. Protocol Module expertise

Likewise, protocol specific skills like mimic-netflow turns a multi-step flow-export setup -- load the protocol 

module, attach a flow-source configuration, set the collector, enable, verify emission -- into one request: 

for example "have agent 12 export NetFlow v9 to 10.0.0.5:2055 and confirm the collector is receiving." 

The skill checks that the NetFlow module is loaded on your instance, walks the configuration through the
daemon's protocol commands, and verifies the session through statistics
and trace output.

 

Other protocol module expertise will be loadable on demand via the MIMIC Update Wizard.

6. Wrapping Up

The MIMIC Skills package adds a natural-language interface alongside the interfaces you already use -- 

one that executes your intent through the same APIs, shows its work, and leaves everything else untouched. For labs
already scripting MIMIC scenarios against Zabbix, Dynatrace, ElastiFlow, or LiveNX, this is the fastest 

path yet from "what I want to test" to a running simulation.

Contact us to try the MIMIC Skills for Claude Code in your environment.