Group Type
Interest GroupMission Statement
The Skills Over MCP Interest Group explores how “agent skills” — rich, structured instructions for agent workflows — can be discovered and consumed through MCP. Native skills support in host applications demonstrates strong demand, and the IG emerged from discussion on SEP-2076 — Agent Skills as a First-Class MCP Primitive, which raised open questions about whether existing MCP primitives suffice or what conventions to standardize. Cross-cutting collaboration is needed because solutions touch the protocol spec, registry schema, SDK implementations, and client behavior.Scope
In Scope
- Requirements gathering: Documenting use cases, constraints, and gaps in current MCP primitives for skill distribution
- Pattern exploration: Testing and evaluating approaches (skills as tools, resources, registry metadata, protocol primitives) and discovery mechanisms (runtime via MCP, domain-level via well-known URIs, ecosystem-level via registry)
- Coordination: Bridging discussions across Registry WG, Agents WG, and external projects including the Agent Skills spec (content format and well-known URI discovery), FastMCP, and PydanticAI
- Proof of concepts: Maintaining a shared repo of reference implementations and experimental findings
Out of Scope
- Approving spec changes: This IG does not have authority to approve protocol changes; recommendations flow through the SEP process
- Registry schema decisions: Schema ownership belongs to the Registry WG; this IG contributes requirements but does not own the schema
- Client implementation mandates: We can document patterns but not require specific client behavior
- Plugin/bundle packaging: Installable bundles (skills + servers + subagents + configuration as a single artifact) — surfaced by use cases but belongs to a broader packaging effort
Related Groups
- Agents WG — How agents consume server metadata, skill activation
- Registry WG — Skills discovery/distribution, registry schema changes
- Primitive Grouping WG — Progressive disclosure patterns
Membership
| Name | Organization | GitHub | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ola Hungerford | Nordstrom / MCP Maintainer | @olaservo | Facilitator |
| Peter Alexander | Anthropic / Core Maintainer | @pja-ant | Facilitator |
| Yu Yi | @erain | Participant | |
| Sunish Sheth | Databricks | @sunishsheth2009 | Participant |
| Keith A Groves | Hyix | @keithagroves | Participant |
| Peder Holdgaard Pedersen | Saxo Bank / MCP Maintainer | @pederhp | Participant |
| Sam Morrow | GitHub | @SamMorrowDrums | Participant |
| Jacob MacDonald | @jakemac53 | Participant | |
| Jonathan Hefner | Independent / MCP Maintainer | @jonathanhefner | Participant |
| Luca Chang | AWS / MCP Maintainer | @LucaButBoring | Participant |
| Bob Dickinson | TeamSpark.ai / MCP Maintainer | @BobDickinson | Participant |
| Radoslav Dimitrov | Stacklok / MCP Maintainer | @rdimitrov | Participant |
| Juan Antonio Osorio | Stacklok | @JAORMX | Participant |
| Kaxil Naik | Astronomer / Apache Airflow PMC | @kaxil | Participant |
| Cliff Hall | Futurescale | @cliffhall | Participant |
Operations
| Meeting | Frequency | Duration | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office Hours | Weekly (Tuesdays) | 60 minutes | Technical discussion, pattern evaluation, proposal review; open to all participants |
Resources
- Experimental findings and reference implementations: modelcontextprotocol/experimental-ext-skills
- Project board: Skills Over MCP IG
Deliverables & Success Metrics
Active Work Items
Full live tracking is on the Skills Over MCP IG project board. Headline workstreams:| Item | Status | Champion |
|---|---|---|
| Skills Extension SEP (draft, Extensions Track) | In Review | @pja-ant |
| Skills Extension reference implementation | In Review | @olaservo |
| Agent Skills spec coordination | In Progress | @jonathanhefner, @pja-ant |
| Registry skills.json proposal | In Progress | @JAORMX |
Success Criteria
- Short-term: Documented consensus on requirements and evaluation of existing approaches
- Medium-term: Clear recommendation (convention vs. protocol extension vs. both) — the draft Skills Extension SEP represents the IG’s current direction: a formal extension using existing Resources primitives
- Long-term: Interoperable skill distribution across MCP servers and clients
Changelog
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 2026-04-14 | Initial charter |