Tools and skills
MCP tools let an agent act through gateway integrations. Skills are Markdown instructions that teach an agent how to carry out a workflow with those tools.
Verify tools are available
Bun runs mcp/server.ts; its dependencies must be installed. After installation, ask an agent to list its available tools and try one read-only operation, such as listing cron jobs. Check the result rather than treating an announced intention as execution.
If tools are unavailable, check bun --version, MCP dependency installation, and the agent logs. In a source checkout, make mcp-install installs the MCP dependencies.
Add a skill
Create skills/review-notes/SKILL.md inside the agent workspace:
---
name: review-notes
description: Review project notes and identify unanswered questions.
---
Read the relevant notes before summarizing.
Separate confirmed decisions from unanswered questions.
Link each finding to its source file.Skills hot-reload. Ask the agent to review a small note and verify that its answer cites the file. The discovery locations and precedence are described below.
Automatic skill learning
gateway.skillLearning controls background review of substantive work. It can create or update automatically learned skills, with daily and total limits and an audit in SKILLS_LEARNED.md. The provenance guard preserves human-authored skills. Review the audit when evaluating what the agent learned.
Connector availability and agent tool permissions also affect what a session can do. See configuration and the MCP server implementation.
Skill discovery and precedence
The gateway discovers a skill as a directory containing SKILL.md. Hidden directories and node_modules are skipped. Keep supporting scripts and examples alongside the instruction file, and refer to them from the skill rather than putting a large manual in its description.
| Location | Registry name | Intended use |
|---|---|---|
<workspace>/skills/<name>/SKILL.md | <name> | Workflows specific to one agent |
mcp/tools/<module>/skills/<name>/SKILL.md | <module>:<name> | Instructions shipped with an MCP module |
~/.claude-gateway/shared-skills/<name>/SKILL.md | <name> | Reusable instructions shared across agents |
Loading proceeds from shared to module to workspace, so a workspace entry overrides an existing registry key. Module prefixes normally prevent collisions with plain workspace/shared names. The generated menu lists user-invocable skills grouped by source. Invoke a workspace skill with /review-notes path/to/notes.md, or a module skill with /<module>:<name> [arguments].
Shared and module instructions are also synchronized into ~/.claude/skills/ for Claude's personal skill discovery. .shared and .module marker files identify managed copies; removed source skills cause their marked copies to be cleaned up. Edit the source under shared-skills or the module, because later synchronization can replace edits to a managed copy.
Source: skill loader, synchronization, and startup/watch wiring.
Learning controls and review flow
Learning is enabled in auto mode by default. A completed session qualifies for review when it reaches the tool-call threshold, fires recovery, or contains a detected user correction, subject to the daily review budget. A qualifying session does not guarantee a useful skill will be written: the reviewer and writer still evaluate the proposal.
| Setting | Built-in default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
minToolCalls | 5 | Tool-call trigger threshold |
maxReviewsPerDay | 20 | Daily background review ceiling |
reviewModel | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | Background review model |
maxAutoSkills | 50 | Learned-skill capacity |
maxAgeDays / minUsesToKeep | 30 / 2 | Curator age/use policy |
pruneHour | 3 | Daily curator hour |
notify | true | Learning notifications |
Per-agent skillLearning values override gateway.skillLearning, then built-in defaults apply. The pruning timezone resolves through agent override, gateway skill-learning override, gateway.timezone, then UTC; invalid timezone values fall through to the next level.
Choose mode: "propose" to queue candidate instructions in skills/.pending/ for review before making them live. In auto mode, inspect the live skill and SKILLS_LEARNED.md after a learning event. The writer marks learned skills origin: auto and refuses to overwrite a human-authored target. Missing provenance is treated as human-authored. Curator policy applies to automatically learned skills, not a blanket deletion of all old instructions.
The menu shortens auto-learned descriptions to 80 characters to bound recurring context cost; the full skill body remains available when invoked.
Source: learning defaults, trigger gates, and provenance-aware writer.
Diagnose a missing skill or tool
Check the exact directory shape, valid YAML frontmatter, and skill name first. An unreadable file can be skipped; a hidden .pending candidate is intentionally not a live skill. Then check the generated menu and any same-name workspace override. Missing binary requirements produce warnings, so discovery alone does not establish that a workflow can run.
A skill supplies instructions, while an MCP tool supplies executable capability. Installing a skill does not install its required binary, authenticate a connector, or broaden an agent's tool permissions. Test the smallest read-only tool involved in the workflow, then invoke the skill on a small example.
Native Claude Code skills in task execution
The orchestration catalog combines gateway-discovered Markdown skills with skills reported by the actual Claude Code worker runtime, including bundled and enabled user/plugin skills. A native skill such as code-review does not need a gateway SKILL.md. Use the exact discovered name rather than guessing it from a directory.
Native discovery performs a Claude Code initialization probe without a user prompt, model call, MCP server, or hooks. The worker rechecks availability in its selected runtime before executing a native skill. CLI_SKILL_UNAVAILABLE means it was not available there; the gateway does not silently retry on a different host/container runtime.
For a gateway Markdown skill task, the driver builds a task-specific Claude plugin containing the pinned skill body and supporting resources, then invokes orchestration-task:<name>. Plugin requirements that cannot be satisfied are rejected. Symlinks are not copied as skill resources; container transfer also imposes a 10 MiB resource limit.
Host workers use Claude's default native tool set and can retain host runtime customization. Restricted non-host profiles explicitly select native tools, require the generated MCP configuration, disable hooks, and suppress unrelated enabled plugins. Consequently a skill working in an interactive host shell is not proof it will work inside a restricted or container task profile. Check the actual discovered inventory and task error before installing or changing anything.
Source: native skill discovery, skill task preparation, and runtime profile arguments.