stripe-best-practices
Stripe best practices
stripe-best-practices is Stripe's own agent skill for integration decisions: it steers the agent to the right Stripe API for payments, subscriptions, Connect, tax and security, using current API and SDK versions.
Install Stripe best practices
Install the skill with the skills CLI
npx skills add stripe/ai --skill stripe-best-practicesOr, in Claude Code, install Stripe's plugin from the official marketplace
claude plugin install stripe@claude-plugins-officialOr, in Codex, install Stripe's plugin from the OpenAI-curated marketplace
codex plugin add stripe@openai-curatedStripe recommends its plugins where available because they update automatically. Copies installed with the skills CLI need npx skills update to stay current.
Or paste this into your coding agent: Install the agent skill stripe-best-practices from github.com/stripe/ai.
A skill can include scripts that run on your computer, so read its source first.
What Stripe best practices does
Stripe best practices is the main skill in Stripe's AI repository and loads whenever an agent plans, builds, changes, tests or reviews a Stripe integration. On 2026-10-01 it names Stripe API version 2026-08-26.dahlia as the latest and lists current SDK versions for Ruby, Python, Node.js, PHP, Java, Go and .NET, telling the agent to use them unless you say otherwise.
A routing table maps each job to an API: Checkout Sessions for one-time payments, Checkout Sessions with the Payment Element for embedded forms, Setup Intents for saving cards, Accounts v2 for Connect platforms, Billing APIs for subscriptions, Metronome for new usage-based billing, Stripe Tax with the Registrations API for sales tax and VAT, and v2 Financial Accounts for embedded banking. The agent reads the matching reference page before writing code.
Its critical rules target common mistakes. The agent must not pass payment_method_types except for Terminal, must treat webhooks as required and fulfil orders in a webhook handler instead of the success page, must confirm an active tax registration before turning on automatic tax, and must use a StripeClient instance instead of the deprecated global API key. It recommends restricted API keys over secret keys and separate sandboxes for development and CI.
When to use Stripe best practices
- You are adding Stripe Checkout or subscriptions to an app and want the current recommended API.
- You are building a marketplace on Stripe Connect.
- You want to collect sales tax or VAT with Stripe Tax without silently collecting nothing.
- You want an agent to review an existing Stripe integration for deprecated patterns.
When to pick something else
- Other payment providers: every rule here is specific to Stripe's APIs.
What Stripe best practices needs
- A Stripe account, or a test sandbox created with the Stripe CLI (stripe sandbox create)
Which agents Stripe best practices works in
Stripe documents Stripe best practices for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build, Any agent that reads SKILL.md files, through the skills CLI. The open skills CLI also installs it into 78 agents, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode (we listed it with the CLI on October 1, 2026). See where each agent looks for skills.
Most details live in reference pages on docs.stripe.com that the agent is told to read before answering, so it needs web access to follow the skill fully.
Stripe best practices license
Stripe best practices is published under MIT.
Related skills for coding and frameworks
- Claude API: Claude API is Anthropic's open-source agent skill for code that calls Claude: current model IDs and prices, guides for seven SDK languages plus cURL, and guided migrations to newer models.
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- React Composition Patterns: React Composition Patterns is Vercel's agent skill for React component APIs: compound components, lifted state and explicit variants instead of a growing list of boolean props.
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