lark-approval: File and Approve Feishu Requests From CLI (729K)

The most expensive noun in Feishu automation is “task”: an approval waiting on you is called a task, but it is not a Feishu task. The official lark-approval skill (v1.2.0, inside larksuite/cli, 17.4K stars) opens with exactly that warning — its routing table says any request whose core object is an approval document, approval todo, or approval instance belongs here, and only non-approval todos may drift to lark-task. I read its 6,969-byte SKILL.md and all 16 reference files end to end, then scraped skills.sh on 2026-09-26: the open.feishu.cn counter shows 728,900 all-time installs, and the larksuite/cli direct counter adds 422.4K more (rank 127) with its own slower weekly band of 9,286, 7,972, 7,262, 6,736, 7,506, 7,564, 6,732, 6,670.

The Routing Rule That Decides the Whole Session

The SKILL.md’s first section is a priority declaration, and it exists because agents routinely lose approval requests to the wrong tool. The trigger list is explicit: approve, reject, transfer, rollback, withdraw, remind, add-sign, cc, plus any query about todos, initiated requests, or instance details. If the final action touches an approval document, route here. lark-task only gets you when the object is a plain non-approval todo.

The behavior rules matter more than the command list. Ops must grab the minimum first — tasks query returns the instance_code + task_id pair, and every write operation needs both, so the skill says to stop there unless the user actually asks for details, current node, form content, or progress. Only then call instances get. If the user hands you an instance_code directly, do not query a list to re-find it.

Filing an Approval: the Never-Skip Step

Starting a request runs a fixed chain: approvals search → approvals get → instances create. The middle step is the one agents skip and the file forbids skipping — you cannot assemble a valid create payload without the definition’s control snapshot and node list. Two hard stops live here:

• A definition flagged is_external=true is third-party. Return its create_link; calling instances create on it is explicitly forbidden.
• approvals.get.form is a snapshot for reading control IDs, types, and option ranges — not a payload template. The real instances create --data.form is a JSON array string, and each control type formats its value differently: date wants RFC3339, amount wants a number plus a currency field, contact accepts only open_ids, telephone needs countryCode + nationalNumber, document needs a token plus type: docx, department values are open_department_id entries.

The honesty rule is the sharpest part of the file: if the target definition contains a control the create API does not support — mutableGroup, tripGroup, serialNumber, account, or any of the apaascorehr* onboarding groups — the skill says tell the user the definition cannot be fully filed via API, instead of guessing a value and firing a broken request.

The 1395001 Discipline: Stop Retrying

Write operations return error 1395001 (task state abnormal / pre-write validation failed) when the world changed under you — another colleague approved it first, the instance moved to a node where the action is no longer allowed, or your permission expired. The reference file for the whole family of actions (reject, transfer, rollback, withdraw, remind) is a retry-limiting decision tree: at most one retry, then a single status re-check (tasks query or instances get), then report a conclusion and the next step to the user. No query/write loops, no blind re-submits — the file explicitly calls those “token and time burners.” Withdraws (instances cancel) are flagged high-risk-write and demand --dry-run first, then --yes only against a confirmed target, and they take just an instance_code — no task_id needed.

Where It Sits in the Lark Family

The open.feishu.cn numbers confirm the family is one counter, not seven: lark-doc 730.0K, lark-approval 728.9K, lark-okr 708.2K, lark-markdown 693.8K, lark-vc-agent 671.5K, lark-apps 638.3K, lark-note 511.3K — every one riding the same [37K → 25K] weekly decline. The direct larksuite/cli counter tells a different story: 422.4K at rank 127 with a flat 7-9K/week band, meaning real npx-style installs keep coming after the platform push faded. All commands default to --as user because approvals are a person’s action, and the skill requires reading lark-shared/SKILL.md (auth and permission handling) before anything else.

If your agent keeps answering “approve” requests with task tools, install this one — npx skills add https://github.com/larksuite/cli --skill lark-approval — and let the routing declaration do the work. The next time someone says “approve the leave request on my desk,” the agent will know exactly which noun it’s holding.