skill-manager

A local-first control center for AI extensions.
Use, review, and discover Skills, MCP servers, and CLI tools across agent harnesses.

Why it exists

AI extensions are scattered across harness-specific folders, MCP config files, and marketplace sources. Skill Manager gives those pieces one local control surface:

Product idea	What it means
In use	Skill Manager controls the item and can enable or disable it across harnesses.
Needs review	Skill Manager found local state, config differences, or inventory issues that need a decision.
Discover	Browse marketplaces and preview external tools.

What you can do

• See what is in use, what needs review, and where extensions are active.
• Adopt local Skills into one shared inventory, then enable or disable them per harness.
• Install or adopt MCP server configs, resolve differences, and enable them where supported.
• Discover Skills, MCP servers, and preview-only CLI tools from marketplace sources.

Product tour

Overview

Start with the whole extension portfolio: what is in use, what needs review, what can be discovered, and where extensions are active.

Skills

Use Skills as shared local packages instead of maintaining separate copies per harness.

Typical flow:

1. Review a Skill found in a harness or install one from the marketplace.
2. Adopt it into the Skill Manager inventory.
3. Enable it only where it should be available.
4. Update, remove, or delete it from one place.

MCP servers

Use MCP servers as one normalized config that can be written into each harness shape.

Typical flow:

1. Review an MCP server found in a harness or install one from the marketplace.
2. Adopt it into the Skill Manager inventory.
3. Enable it where the server should be available.
4. Resolve config differences, disable harness bindings, or uninstall it from one place.

Marketplace

Marketplace is the discovery surface:

• Skills Marketplace: browse and install Skills.
• MCP Marketplace: browse and install MCP servers.
• CLI Marketplace: preview external CLI tools from CLIs.dev. This is display-only; Skill Manager does not install or manage CLIs.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap mode-io/tap
brew install skill-manager
skill-manager start

npm

npm install -g @mode-io/skill-manager
skill-manager start

Supported harnesses

Codex CLI Docs

Claude Code Docs

Cursor Docs

OpenCode Docs

OpenClaw Docs

Harness	Skills	MCP servers
Codex CLI	Yes	Yes
Claude Code	Yes	Yes
Cursor	Yes	Yes
OpenCode	Yes	Yes
OpenClaw	Yes	Not Yet

Local-first safety

Skill Manager is a local configuration-management tool. It runs on your machine and reads or writes local harness extension state.

Actions that can change local state include:

• adopting a local skill folder
• enabling or disabling a skill for a harness
• updating a source-backed skill
• removing or deleting a skill
• installing an MCP server into a source harness
• adopting an existing MCP config
• enabling, disabling, resolving, or uninstalling an MCP server
• changing harness support settings

App-owned files live under ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager on macOS.

How it works

Skills

Before adoption, each harness points at its own local skill folder. After adoption, Skill Manager keeps one canonical package in its shared local store and exposes it to selected harnesses with local links. Disabling a harness removes that harness binding without deleting the package.

MCP servers

MCP servers are stored as normalized Skill Manager records, then translated into the config shape each harness expects:

• Codex uses TOML under mcp_servers.
• Claude Code and Cursor use mcpServers JSON entries.
• OpenCode uses typed local/remote MCP entries.
• OpenClaw MCP writes are not yet supported.

When Skill Manager finds different configs for the same MCP server, it asks you to resolve the source of truth first.

CLIs

CLI marketplace entries are preview-only.

Configuration

On macOS, app-owned files live under ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager.

Useful paths:

• shared skills store: ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager/shared
• MCP manifest: ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager/mcp/manifest.json
• marketplace cache: ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager/marketplace
• app settings: ~/Library/Application Support/skill-manager/settings.json

Most users do not need to change these locations. If you manage skills in a custom environment, you can override individual skill roots with environment variables.

Harness	Env var	Default Skill Manager skill root
Codex	SKILL_MANAGER_CODEX_ROOT	~/.agents/skills
Claude	SKILL_MANAGER_CLAUDE_ROOT	~/.claude/skills
Cursor	SKILL_MANAGER_CURSOR_ROOT	~/.cursor/skills
OpenCode	SKILL_MANAGER_OPENCODE_ROOT	~/.config/opencode/skills
OpenClaw	n/a	~/.openclaw/skills

MCP config locations are harness-owned. Skill Manager writes only to verified config paths and skips unsupported harness writes.

From source

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Node.js 18+
• npm

skill-manager supports Python 3.11+. CI validates backend compatibility on Python 3.11 through 3.14, while packaging and release builds stay pinned to Python 3.11 for determinism.

Contributor setup

scripts/install-dev.sh

Run locally

scripts/start-dev.sh

Stop the managed local instance:

scripts/stop-dev.sh

The split dev flow is available when you want Vite hot reload:

npm run dev
npm run dev:backend

Default local URLs:

• Frontend: http://127.0.0.1:5173
• Backend: http://127.0.0.1:8000
• Health: http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/health

Validation:

scripts/install-dev.sh
npm run typecheck
bash scripts/test_backend.sh
npm test
npm run build

Troubleshooting

• If Marketplace requests fail with Marketplace is temporarily unavailable, verify your network connection and try again.
• If npm install -g @mode-io/skill-manager reports that Homebrew already owns skill-manager, uninstall the Homebrew formula first. The inverse also applies: uninstall the npm package before switching back to Homebrew.
• If an MCP harness is shown as unavailable, Skill Manager has detected that the local client is missing or does not support the required config surface.

More to come

Extension families

• Hook support
• Slash command support
• Plugin support

Harness expansion

• GitHub Copilot
• Gemini CLI
• Cline
• Windsurf
• Qwen Code
• Kimi Code
• Qoder

Community

• See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines.
• See SECURITY.md to report vulnerabilities privately.