The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the 3DOptix listing page.
Design, simulate and analyse optical systems from your coding agent, using the 3DOptix cloud platform.
This repository is a plugin — it bundles the 3DOptix MCP server together with a skill that teaches the agent how to use it well. Install it once and your agent can build optical setups, place lenses and detectors, run GPU ray-trace simulations and advanced optical analysis.
Skills here follow the Agent Skills open standard, so they work in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other compliant clients.
If you only want the tools and not the workflow guidance, the server is listed in the
MCP Registry as com.3doptix/optical-design, or add
it directly:
You need a 3DOptix account. New sign-ups at 3doptix.com get a fully functional trial; continued use needs a subscription.
Authentication is OAuth 2.0 with dynamic client registration. There is no API key to paste.
/mcp, select 3doptix, sign in via the browser.codex mcp login 3doptix.Then confirm it worked by asking your agent to list your setups. Your agent can also walk you
through this itself — the bundled 3doptix-setup skill activates on connection errors. Full
troubleshooting: skills/3doptix-setup/SKILL.md.
| Skill | What it covers |
|---|---|
3doptix-workflow | Setup creation, component placement and alignment, light sources, detectors, catalog and custom optics, simulation, analysis, optimisation, Zemax import, CAD upload |
3doptix-setup | Connecting and verifying the MCP server; activates on auth errors |
The 3doptix MCP server provides tools for setups, parts, the optics and optomechanics catalogs,
simulation, analysis and rendering. Tool reference: 3doptix.com.
Skill content lives in exactly one place. Each store gets a small manifest pointing at the same
skills/ tree — nothing is duplicated per client.
There is no build step. Skills are Markdown and manifests are JSON, so what you see here is exactly what gets installed.
Create skills/<name>/SKILL.md with the required frontmatter:
name must match the directory name — every store enforces this. Put anything lazily loaded in
skills/<name>/references/ and point at it from SKILL.md. Skills are discovered by directory,
so there is no manifest to register a new one in.
Only skills under skills/ ship. A skill still in development belongs in an inactive-skills/
directory instead — no store scans it there, so it can live in the repository without reaching
users.
No install step; it has no dependencies. It checks skill frontmatter against the Agent Skills
spec, confirms all four manifests agree on a version, and refuses to pass if .mcp.json ever
grows a credential. CI runs the same script on every push and pull request.
Before publishing a change, also confirm what a user will actually receive:
.claude-plugin/plugin.json holds the authoritative version. To cut a release:
Never edit a manifest's version by hand — validate.js will fail, which is the point.
Directories that list this plugin track commits on main and pick up changes automatically, so
a push is a release whether or not you tag it. Tag anyway; it is how users pin a known-good
version.
MIT — see LICENSE.