Skillsmith

Shared skills, safe for production.

Once more than one team is publishing agent skills, the problem stops being finding them and starts being managing them. Which team is this scoped to? Which version is installed where? Has it been flagged by a security scan? What happens to the ones nobody maintains anymore?

Skillsmith is a registry for sharing, scanning, and tracking agent skills across teams. Skills are published to a registry scoped to your team and versioned immutably, so drift across installs is visible instead of silent. Flagged or suspicious skills are quarantined pending security review. Skills that go stale can be deprecated instead of quietly rotting in someone's repo.

Installation

Quick Setup (MCP)

Skillsmith is MCP-compatible — pick the snippet for your agent. SMI-4580: snippets sourced from packages/cli/src/templates/mcp-server.template.snippets.ts so this README and the website docs cannot drift.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "@skillsmith/mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@skillsmith/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SKILLSMITH_API_KEY": "sk_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "@skillsmith/mcp-server": {
      "command": "<paste output of: which skillsmith-mcp (macOS/Linux) or where skillsmith-mcp (Windows)>",
      "env": {
        "SKILLSMITH_API_KEY": "sk_live_...",
        "SKILLSMITH_CLIENT": "cursor"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "@skillsmith/mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@skillsmith/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SKILLSMITH_API_KEY": "sk_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "@skillsmith/mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@skillsmith/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SKILLSMITH_API_KEY": "${env:SKILLSMITH_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

[mcp_servers.@skillsmith/mcp-server]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@skillsmith/mcp-server"]

[mcp_servers.@skillsmith/mcp-server.env]
SKILLSMITH_API_KEY = "sk_live_..."

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "@skillsmith/mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@skillsmith/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SKILLSMITH_API_KEY": "sk_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

After adding to your MCP client settings and restarting, you can search for skills immediately.

API Key Configuration (Optional)

For higher rate limits and usage tracking, authenticate with your API key.

Easiest — CLI login (interactive):

npm install -g @skillsmith/cli
skillsmith login

This opens skillsmith.app/account/cli-token in your browser. Generate a key, copy it, and paste it when prompted. The key is stored securely in your OS keyring.

MCP server config — add the key to your settings:

The per-client snippets above already include the env.SKILLSMITH_API_KEY slot — replace the sk_live_... placeholder with the value from skillsmith login.

Get your API key at skillsmith.app/account/cli-token.

Note: Never paste API keys in chat. Configure via settings.json only.

CLI Installation (Development)

The CLI is available for local development:

# From the repository root
npm run build
node packages/cli/dist/index.js search "testing"

The four questions

Once more than one team is publishing skills, these are the questions that matter:

1. Which team is this scoped to? Every skill in the registry is scoped to a team.
2. Which version is installed here? Versions are immutable; skill_diff and skill_outdated report drift for what's installed on the machine you run them from.
3. Has it been flagged by the security scan? Skills pulled from the public index are scored automatically; flagged or suspicious ones are quarantined pending review — unflagged means it wasn't flagged, not that it was formally approved. Skills carry one of five trust tiers, from Official to Unverified (Security Guide).
4. What happens to the ones nobody maintains? Stale skills can be deprecated instead of quietly rotting in someone's repo.

How it works

• Publish — skills are published to a registry scoped to your team, versioned immutably.
• Version — every publish creates a new immutable version; nothing is overwritten in place.
• Drift detection — skill_diff and skill_outdated show what's installed and where it has fallen behind, at the point you check.
• Deprecate — skills that go stale can be deprecated instead of quietly rotting in someone's repo.

Scopes and permissions

Skills are scoped to your team's registry. Team owners and admins control who can publish and manage skills; members install and search.

Start solo

Search, install, and manage skills for yourself, free. When your team needs the same skill, the registry is already there.

MCP Tools

Local-first by design. Skillsmith caches the registry in a local SQLite database at ~/.skillsmith/skills.db, shared across the MCP server, the CLI, and the VS Code extension. Search is FTS5 (SQLite's built-in keyword search) by default; semantic search is opt-in (SKILLSMITH_USE_HNSW=true) and runs over local ONNX embeddings (an open ML model format that runs on CPU — no API call). Inside the Local Skill Database walks through the schema, the FTS5 / HNSW search paths, and how sync (a Team+ tier feature) keeps the cache fresh.

Architecture

Skillsmith uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP):

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  MCP Client (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)               │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
│  │  Skillsmith MCP Server                          ││
│  │  └── @skillsmith/mcp-server                     ││
│  │      ├── search, get_skill, compare             ││
│  │      ├── install_skill, uninstall_skill         ││
│  │      └── recommend, validate                    ││
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
│                          │                           │
│                          ▼                           │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
│  │  ~/.skillsmith/skills.db (SQLite + FTS5)        ││
│  │  ~/.claude/skills/ (installed skills)           ││
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Usage

Once configured, your MCP client can use Skillsmith tools:

"Search for testing skills"
→ Uses search tool to find testing-related skills

"Show me details for community/jest-helper"
→ Uses get_skill tool to retrieve full skill information

"Install the jest-helper skill"
→ Uses install_skill tool to add it to ~/.claude/skills

"Compare jest-helper and vitest-helper"
→ Uses compare tool to show side-by-side comparison

CLI Usage (Development)