Skills Over MCP Charter

Group Type

Working Group

Mission Statement

The Skills Over MCP Working Group defines how “agent skills” — rich, structured instructions for agent workflows — are discovered, distributed, and consumed through MCP. Native skills support in host applications demonstrates strong demand, and the group 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. The WG produces specification extensions, reference implementations, and coordination artifacts because solutions touch the protocol spec, registry schema, SDK implementations, and client behavior.

SEP-2640 — Skills Extension is Final. The WG maintains the official Skills extension (io.modelcontextprotocol/skills) in modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills. Current work focuses on implementation support, interoperability, and evolution of the published extension.

Scope

In Scope

• Specification Work: Maintain and evolve the Skills extension, with changes tracked in the decision log; propose related core protocol changes through the SEP process
• Reference Implementations: SDK components and reference servers demonstrating skill discovery and consumption patterns
• Cross-Cutting Concerns: Coordination with Registry WG (skills discovery/distribution, registry schema changes), Agents IG (skill activation, server metadata consumption), Progressive Disclosure WG (progressive disclosure patterns), and external projects including the Agent Skills spec (content format and well-known URI discovery), FastMCP, and PydanticAI
• Documentation: Specification sections and guidance covering skill authoring, discovery, and consumption

Out of Scope

• Registry schema decisions: Schema ownership belongs to the Registry WG; this WG 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 IG — How agents consume server metadata, skill activation
• Registry WG — Skills discovery/distribution, registry schema changes
• Progressive Disclosure WG — Progressive disclosure patterns

Leadership

Authority & Decision Rights

Membership

Operations

Default start time is 9:00 AM Pacific. Sessions may occasionally be scheduled earlier to better accommodate non-US time zones.

Meetings are published at meet.modelcontextprotocol.io. Agendas are posted in advance per MCP meeting policy. Meeting notes are published to Meeting Notes — Skills Over MCP WG.

Discord: #skills-over-mcp-wg

Resources

• Skills extension overview and Final SEP-2640
• Specification and WG documents: modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills
• Implementations and client support
• Decision log and archived design work

Deliverables & Success Metrics

Completed Milestones

• SEP-2640 is Final, merged on September 13, 2026.
• The official specification is published in ext-skills, with a website overview.
• Skills conformance scenarios were merged on September 11, 2026.

Current Work

Track proposals, implementation work, and coordination in ext-skills issues, with links to SDK or client issues where the implementation lives. Owners, progress, and priorities are maintained there rather than in this charter.

Success Criteria

• Specification: A published Resources-based Skills extension — achieved with Final SEP-2640.
• Implementation: SDK and host implementations that pass the applicable conformance scenarios.
• Interoperability: Independent MCP servers and clients that discover and load skills consistently.

Changelog