modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills
Watch
1
0
Fork
You've already forked ext-skills
 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions
ext-skills/docs/archive/related-work.md
Sambhav Kothari 34315ab7d7
 docs: align Skills corrections with the final SEP and website (#147) 
The stable Skills page missed the final SEP's Agent Skills compatibility
clause, and its examples used abbreviated hashes and inconsistent byte
sizes. Archived drafts also retained current-sounding source-of-truth
guidance.

This corrects the stable page directly to match already-established
requirements: restores the compatibility clause, shows the resources
capability and server/discover, explains omitted request metadata, and
makes the example manifests and content consistent. It also labels
archived documents as historical and fixes the SEP domain in AGENTS.md.
This is an editorial alignment, not a new extension proposal; #142
remains separate.

Validation: all JSON examples parsed; all 13 manifest entries checked
against sample bytes for SHA-256 and size; the corrected specification
builds with the VitePress publishing site; git diff --check passed.

AI assistance: prepared with Codex.
2026-09-16 06:03:49 -07:00

11 KiB
Raw Permalink Blame History

Related Work

Historical document. Frozen during development of SEP-2640; statements of current status and requirements below describe that draft-era context. See the stable specification for current requirements and the archive index for context.

SEPs and Proposals

Proposal Venue Description
SEP-2640 (Skills Extension) MCP Spec This WG's proposed extension: skills served over MCP using the Resources primitive and skill:// URI scheme (v1 baseline text)
PR #2527 MCP Spec Recommend clients expose resource read to models — prerequisite for the resources-based skills approach
skills.json format proposal MCP Registry Skills metadata in registry schema
SEP-2093 MCP Spec Resource Contents Metadata and Capabilities: scoped resources/list, per-resource capabilities, resources/metadata endpoint — rejected (labeled upstream)
SEP-2076 MCP Spec Agent Skills as a first-class MCP primitive — closed (2026-02-24, without merge)

Client support for the extension is tracked on the official extension client matrix. The implementation tables below are frozen; implementations.md has more recent information.

Working Group Member Implementations

Work by WG leads and active participants that directly implements the group's core patterns: SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter, skill:// resource URIs, and progressive disclosure via MCP primitives.

Implementation Author URL Notes
skilljack-mcp Ola Hungerford github.com/olaservo/skilljack-mcp SKILL.md, skill:// resources, tools, and prompts; progressive disclosure (index→skill→files); file watching for dynamic updates; audience annotations
skills-over-mcp Keith Groves github.com/keithagroves/skills-over-mcp SKILL.md, skill:// resources with progressive disclosure (index→skill→documents); Zod validation against Agent Skills spec
skillsdotnet Peder HP github.com/PederHP/skillsdotnet C# implementation: SKILL.md, skill:// resources, load_skill tool for progressive disclosure, manifest with file hashes; published on NuGet; compatible with FastMCP 3.0

Alternative Approaches

Work by WG members and MCP maintainers that explores skills over MCP through different technical approaches than the core SKILL.md / skill:// pattern.

Implementation Author Organization URL Notes
skillful-mcp Kurtis Van Gent Google Cloud github.com/kurtisvg/skillful-mcp Progressive disclosure via 4 lightweight tools (list_skills, use_skill, read_resource, execute_code); wraps downstream MCP servers as skills using mcp.json config rather than SKILL.md; sandboxed code execution via Monty
Astronomer agents Kaxil Naik Astronomer github.com/astronomer/agents Production skills catalog for Apache Airflow (blueprint, migration, warehouse-init); uses SKILL.md frontmatter but distributed via plugin marketplace rather than MCP resources; demonstrates real-world skills adoption at scale
mcpGraph skill Bob Dickinson TeamSpark.ai github.com/TeamSparkAI/mcpGraph Declarative YAML-based tool orchestration engine (directed graphs of MCP tool calls); includes SKILL.md files as documentation; explores a complementary "no-code composition" approach to skill authoring

Other Community Implementations

External projects building on skills patterns or integrating skills into frameworks.

Implementation Author URL Notes
FastMCP 3.0 Skills FastMCP gofastmcp.com/servers/providers/skills Native skills provider (#2694)
PydanticAI Skills PydanticAI pydantic/pydantic-ai#3780 Agent skills with tools-based approach
mcp-execution bug-ops github.com/bug-ops/mcp-execution Compiles MCP servers into skill packages; --dry-run preview
mcp-cli philschmid github.com/philschmid/mcp-cli Wraps MCP servers as CLI for progressive disclosure
my-cool-proxy karashiiro github.com/karashiiro/my-cool-proxy MCP gateway with skills as resources via Lua scripts; result offloading, session persistence (v1.6.x)
NimbleBrain skills repo NimbleBrain github.com/NimbleBrainInc/skills Monorepo with .skill artifact format
NimbleBrain registry NimbleBrain registry.nimbletools.ai Registry with skill metadata support
NimbleBrain skill:// servers NimbleBrain github.com/NimbleBrainInc skill:// resource colocation examples: mcp-ipinfo, mcp-webfetch, mcp-pdfco, mcp-folk, mcp-brave-search
Kiro powers directory Kiro github.com/kirodotdev/powers Plugin directory bundling skills + MCP servers; active catalog (AWS, GCP migration, SAM, etc.)
mcpkit (ext/skills) Sri Panyam github.com/panyam/mcpkit Go SDK, server + host: SKILL.md, skill:// resources, progressive disclosure (skill://index.json catalog + host load_skill tool); per-supporting-file digests with verified reads, resource-fetch size + per-server byte budget, resources/directory/read; no code-execution surface (enforced by a build-failing test); released in v0.3.0

Related Ecosystem Work

Projects that illustrate the problem space or use adjacent patterns.

Project Author URL Notes
chrome-devtools-mcp Google (ChromeDevTools) github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp Real-world example of the problem: skills/ folder requires separate install path
Strands Agents MCP server AWS github.com/strands-agents/mcp-server Docs-as-MCP: TF-IDF search + doc fetch
AWS MCP server AWS docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-mcp/… retrieve_agent_sop (skills) + call_aws (tool)

Specifications and Standards

  • Agent Skills Standard: agentskills.io
  • Agent Skills Discovery RFC v0.2.0 (Matt Silverlock / Cloudflare): github.com/cloudflare/agent-skills-discovery-rfc — Domain-level skill discovery using /.well-known/agent-skills/ (RFC 8615). Defines index.json with progressive disclosure, skill-md and archive distribution types, $schema versioning, SHA-256 content integrity, and archive safety requirements. Complementary to MCP-level discovery: .well-known answers "what skills does this domain publish?" while MCP answers "how does the agent consume them at runtime?"
  • Skill dependency declaration: agentskills/agentskills#110 — Discusses how skills should declare their tool/server dependencies
  • Apache Airflow AIP-91 (MCP integration): cwiki.apache.org/…/AIP-91+-+MCP

Integrity, Content Addressing, and Attestation

Related work on establishing and verifying the integrity, authenticity, and provenance of skill resources.

  • skill-set format (draft) (Harry Martin / flocker.md): skill-set.md — Transport-agnostic manifest specification and CLI for named, versioned collections of skills assembled from disparate sources. Defines deterministic whole-skill content hashes and set-level roll-ups, lockfiles, receipt-time content verification, and optional out-of-band URL-fragment pins. Complementary to SEP-2640: provides prior art for deriving a single content address from a complete {uri, digest} resource set and for future whole-skill or multi-skill attestations. See the reference directory for an immutable example.

Background Reading

  • Anthropic's guidance on progressive disclosure: Equipping agents for the real world with agent skills
  • "MCP and Skills: Why Not Both?" (Kurtis Van Gent): kvg.dev/posts/20260125-skills-and-mcp/ — Frames MCP (connectivity) and Skills (context saturation) as complementary; discusses hybrid approaches
  • "Skills Over MCP" (Angie Jones, Agentic AI Foundation): aaif.io/blog/skills-over-mcp/ — "Ship the manual with the product": bundle Agent Skills with MCP servers so agents get both tools and instructional guidance. Describes the working group's proposal (SEP-2640) — skill:// resources, a skill://index.json catalog for lightweight discovery, and progressive disclosure of full instructions on demand
  • "Progressive Discovery in MCP, Part 2" (Sam Morrow, GitHub MCP Server maintainer): sam-morrow.com/blog/progressive-discovery-in-mcp-part-2 — Advocates skills-based progressive discovery to solve tool bloat: skill:// resources, deferred tool loading via provider mechanisms (Anthropic tool_reference, OpenAI defer_loading), and the io.modelcontextprotocol/tools metadata namespace. Grounded in lessons from GitHub's MCP Server (100+ tools, 12M weekly calls)
  • Conceptual spec visualization (Keith Groves): enact-465fb1fc.mintlify.app/specification/draft/server/skills — "What if" exploration
  • llms.txt convention: llmstxt.org — Convention for making documentation LLM-accessible; used by MCPDoc in a way similar to how skills work
  • AWS Agent SOPs: docs.aws.amazon.com/…/agent-sops — Pre-built operational workflows as skill-like guidance
  • Video background: youtube.com/watch?v=CEvIs9y1uog