cesium-skill

AI-agent-native toolkit for building polished CesiumJS geospatial apps. Write a prompt. Get a production-grade globe-based analytics app that looks designed, not generated.

Built for geospatial analysts, GIS practitioners, and AEC professionals. Inspired by heygen-com/hyperframes — the same skills-first, agent-first philosophy, applied to interactive 3D maps.

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What you get

Piece	Purpose	Install
Skill (skill/)	Procedural knowledge Claude uses to make correct, polished Cesium decisions — Viewer setup, 3D Tiles, cinematics, overlays, design system.	Copy skill/ into .claude/skills/cesium-skill/ in your project (or register globally).
CLI (cesium-skill)	npx cesium-skill init my-app scaffolds a starter. Two templates: react (Vite + React + TS + Tailwind + shadcn/ui, default) or vanilla (plain JS + Vite).	npm i -g cesium-skill or use npx.
MCP server (@cesium-skill/mcp)	Live access for agents: validate tokens, search ion assets, list providers, inspect 3D Tiles metadata, check ion processing status, geocode places, scaffold projects, and generate_snippet for codegen from established patterns.	Add to your MCP config (see mcp/README.md).

You can use any one alone. They're designed to compose.

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Quickstart (humans)

npx cesium-skill init my-globe
cd my-globe
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env — replace `your_token_here` with your Cesium ion token
# (https://cesium.com/ion — free tier is plenty)
pnpm install
pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:5173. You get:

• Cesium World Terrain + Bing aerial
• USGS earthquakes (last 30 days) streamed from the public feed
• Magnitude legend, layer panel, time slider, camera bookmarks
• Dark theme, Tailwind + shadcn/ui, CSS-variable design tokens

Quickstart (Claude / Cursor / agents)

1. Add the skill: copy skill/ to .claude/skills/cesium-skill/ or register with your agent's skill loader.

2. (Optional) Register the MCP server:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "cesium-skill": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "@cesium-skill/mcp"]
       }
     }
   }

3. Prompt:

   Build a CesiumJS app that visualizes USGS earthquakes from the last 30 days. Include a time slider, magnitude legend, and a camera bookmark for the Ring of Fire. Match my existing Tailwind theme.

The skill orchestrates: scaffolds → wires data → composes overlays → polishes camera/motion → hands back a running app.

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Why a skill and a CLI and an MCP?

Following the community consensus:

• Skill = how to do it (procedural knowledge, decisions, patterns).
• CLI = humans and agents with shell access can scaffold.
• MCP = live access to Cesium ion / geocoding / validation / codegen that can't be encoded as static text.

Knowledge lives once (the skill). The CLI and MCP reference the same templates and registry so there's no drift.

How this relates to CesiumGS/cesium-ai-integrations

CesiumGS/cesium-ai-integrations is the official Cesium AI effort. It takes a modular, multi-server approach: separate MCP servers for camera control, entity management, animation, and geolocation, plus a codegen MCP and a Context7 integration for live API docs. Strengths: clean separation of concerns, official credibility, runtime control APIs.

cesium-skill takes a unified, single-server approach optimized for the build-an-app-from-a-prompt workflow. One MCP server. One CLI. One skill. Everything composable, no multi-process orchestration. Strengths: lower configuration friction, a real scaffold story, an opinionated design system, the procedural Skill layer.

The two are complementary, not competing. Use the official servers when you need the official runtime control surface; use this when you want a batteries-included build-and-ship toolkit. We absorb good ideas from the official effort (Context7 references for live API docs, runtime tileset inspection, codegen) — see skill/SKILL.md for the Context7 library IDs.

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Repository layout

cesium-skill/
├── skill/          # Claude Agent Skill (SKILL.md + references + templates)
├── cli/            # npx cesium-skill
├── mcp/            # @cesium-skill/mcp (MCP server)
└── registry/       # Shared catalog of overlays, presets, datasets

See the plan document for the architectural rationale.

Status

v1 targets CesiumJS (web) only with a GIS-analyst persona default. Cesium for Unreal / Unity / Omniverse are on the v2 roadmap.

License

Apache-2.0.