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MCP server

tome mcp runs Tome as a Model Context Protocol server. This is how a coding agent searches your catalogs and loads skills at runtime, instead of holding everything in context.

tome mcp

The server speaks MCP over stdio, so harnesses launch it as a subprocess.

Tools​

Tome exposes three tools, forming a search-then-load flow:

  • search_skills — semantic search over enabled skills and commands. Returns candidate matches (KNN + reranker), so the agent can decide what's relevant.
  • get_skill_info — a middle tier that returns metadata about a skill (including its when_to_use guidance) without pulling the full body. Useful for confirming relevance before loading.
  • get_skill — loads a skill's full content, with variable substitution applied, ready for the agent to use.

The typical loop is: search_skills to find candidates → get_skill_info to confirm → get_skill to load only the winner.

Prompts​

User-invocable entries — commands and agent personas (when enabled) — are exposed as MCP prompts. In a harness that surfaces prompts, these appear as slash commands the user can invoke directly, with argument substitution handled by Tome.

Wiring it into an editor​

You normally don't configure this by hand. Running

tome harness use <name>

writes the MCP server configuration for that harness automatically, so the editor knows to launch tome mcp and which tools are available. See Harnesses for what's written per harness.

If you're wiring an MCP client manually, point it at the tome mcp command over stdio. If the server fails to start, Troubleshooting and tome doctor will report why.