Integration Guide

How It Works

SkillRepo exposes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that IDEs connect to over HTTP. The skillrepo CLI wires two pieces together: an MCP config for each detected IDE, and a local copy of your library synced from the registry. Run npx skillrepo init and both are set up in one shot.

Claude Code is the only vendor with a documented skills-directory convention. The other three currently fall back to a project-level skills/ folder; if that folder is newly created by the CLI, /skills/ is added to your .gitignore so your library isn't committed by accident.

CLI Command Reference

The skillrepo CLI ships seven commands. All commands read credentials from ~/.claude/skillrepo/config.json, the SKILLREPO_ACCESS_KEY environment variable, or the--key flag — in that order.

Every command supports --help (per-command options), --verbose (stack traces on error, including retry attempts), --global (target ~/.claude/skills/ instead of the project), and --json (structured output).

Read-only commands (init, update, get, list, search) automatically retry transient server failures (429, 502, 503, 504, and network errors) with exponential backoff. Write commands (add, remove) are single-shot to keep behavior predictable.

Team Setup

Configure SkillRepo once in your shared repository so every team member gets a working integration automatically when they clone or pull. No per-developer IDE setup required.

npx skillrepo init

npx skillrepo init --key sk_live_abc123 --yes

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "skillrepo": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://skillrepo.dev/api/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${SKILLREPO_ACCESS_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "skillrepo": {
      "url": "https://skillrepo.dev/api/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:SKILLREPO_ACCESS_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "id": "skillrepo-api-key",
      "type": "promptString",
      "description": "SkillRepo access key (sk_live_...)",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "skillrepo": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://skillrepo.dev/api/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:skillrepo-api-key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

# Commit only the MCP config files
git add .mcp.json .cursor/mcp.json .vscode/mcp.json
git commit -m "chore: add SkillRepo MCP integration"

echo 'SKILLREPO_ACCESS_KEY=sk_live_their_key' >> .env.local

Enterprise Setup

For organizations that manage developer tooling centrally, MCP configuration can be deployed through IT administration tools rather than committed to individual repositories. This ensures consistent configuration across all projects and teams.

Per-Developer Setup

If you are setting up SkillRepo for yourself rather than a team, or want to add it to a personal project, follow these steps.

1. 1

   Run npx skillrepo init

   Run the setup command from your project directory. It will prompt for your access key if one is not already set. If you do not have a key yet, create one at Settings → Access Keys. See the Getting Started guide for details.

   npx skillrepo init

   The CLI auto-detects your IDEs, writes the MCP config and the .env.local access-key file for each one, and pulls your library to disk at .claude/skills/. Run skillrepo update periodically to stay current.

2. 2

   Done -- start using skills

   Your IDE can now discover and activate skills from your SkillRepo library. Skill content loads live via MCP on each use, and cached copies on disk keep activations fast even when offline.

FAQ