Skills over MCP — Local and Served Skills

A BOB vault reaches its skills, playbooks and value chains in one of two ways. Agents and people should recognise both.

	Full vault	Starter vault
Skills	All local, in {skills.root} (default 00-CORE/Agents/skills/)	Only the skills that operate the vault are local; every other skill is served by the skills MCP server
Playbooks	Local, in 00-CORE/Playbooks/	Served by the skills MCP server
Value chains	Local, in VALUE-CHAINS.md	Served by the skills MCP server
Catalogues	SKILLS, PLAYBOOKS, VALUE-CHAINS	Ask the MCP server; the local catalogues are absent or list only the local skills

Both variants use the same workspace: the same folders, data model, templates, Bases, TaskNotes, BOB Workspace and agent hooks. Notes a served skill writes are routed and validated exactly like notes a local skill writes.

The local skills in a starter vault

These run the vault itself and are always local, because the agent hooks, the BOB Workspace plugin and the templates call them by path:

context-pack, vault-validator, tasknotes, personal-backlog, obsidian-ops, bob-workspace-bootstrap, bob-workspace-compose, bob-install, bob-doctor, acp-doctor, obsidian-plugin-manager, vault-setup, vault-upgrade, vault-preflight.

Finding a skill, playbook or value chain

1. Local first. If {skills.root}/<name>/SKILL.md exists, use it.
2. Otherwise ask the skills MCP server. Its tools share one prefix: the server's --prefix, or the library namespace (bob_) when it serves one library. Use …_search_skills or …_list_skills to find a skill, …_get_skill to read its SKILL.md, and …_read_skill_file for its references. Use …_list_playbooks / …_get_playbook for playbooks and …_list_value_chains / …_get_value_chain for value chains. Playbooks are also offered as MCP prompts.
3. A skill can appear in both places, for example tasknotes. Both are the same skill; the local copy is the one installed with this vault.

A playbook step that names a skill works the same way: run it locally if the skill is local, otherwise fetch it from the MCP server.

Running a served skill's scripts

Reading a served skill needs nothing else. To run its scripts, copy it to disk together with the skills it declares as runtime dependencies, then run the commands from the skill folder as usual and hand them the vault:

npx github:cbruyndoncx/ThirdBrain-skills-mcp pull <skill> --with-deps \
  --command <the server command below> --to ~/.cache/skills-mcp-client/bob
cd ~/.cache/skills-mcp-client/bob/<skill>
VAULT_PATH=<vault> uv run scripts/<script>.py --vault <vault>

--with-deps pulls the whole dependency closure, so approve it as one unit. --sync on a later pull fetches only what changed.

API keys for served skills

A served skill runs outside the vault, so it does not read the vault's .env. Ask your AI coder to set the keys that skill needs in your environment. Where they go depends on your MCP host: your shell profile, the host's own settings, or the env of its MCP server configuration. .env.example in the vault root lists the keys and the skills that use them.

Connecting the skills MCP server

Register the server once per machine. The installer does it for you: a full bob-install run offers to register it at the end and asks for the skills pack, or pass the pack up front:

bash {skills.root}/bob-install/scripts/setup.sh --skills-lib <skills pack>
uv run {skills.root}/bob-install/scripts/register_skills_mcp.py --lib <skills pack>

It registers the server as skills with every AI tool it finds: Claude Code (user scope), Codex and Antigravity. An existing skills registration is shown to you and replaced only if you say so. bob-doctor reports whether it is registered, and with --deep whether it answers.

To do it by hand for Claude Code:

claude mcp add --scope user skills -- npx github:cbruyndoncx/ThirdBrain-skills-mcp \
  --lib bob=<skills pack> --exclude-tiers internal,private --dev-status integrated

<skills pack> is the BOB skills pack: a downloaded .zip, or an https://…zip#sha256=<digest> URL pinned to its checksum. The library ZIP is in the Skool community; download it there and check it against its .sha256 file. A full vault can also serve itself, with --lib bob=<vault>.

Check the connection with claude mcp get skills. The first call after a restart can take a while, because the server scans the whole library before it answers.

Related

• symlink_setup: how the AI tools find the local skills
• AGENTS: the bootstrap contract, including how skill commands are run