Smithery CLI Skill

The Smithery CLI Skill is a specialized operational skill developed by Smithery and Arcade AI for autonomous agents. It equips language models such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor with canonical procedural guidelines and command syntax to search for MCP servers, register endpoints, inspect tool hierarchies, and invoke tools directly via the smithery command-line utility. The primary open-source repository is maintained at github.com/arcadeai-labs/smithery-cli (previously smithery-ai/cli), with the skill definition located at skills/smithery-ai-cli/SKILL.md.

Capabilities Imparted to the Agent

While many coding and automation assistants have built-in support for MCP concepts, they often lack runtime knowledge on how to dynamically discover and attach integrations on the fly. This skill bridges that capability gap. Whenever a user task calls for an external service, such as managing GitHub issues, querying Jira backlogs, pulling database records, or checking observability metrics, the agent loads the skill and executes a deterministic workflow.

First, the agent uses smithery mcp search to identify qualified servers matching the required integration or service domain. Next, the server is attached via smithery mcp add under a defined local identifier or URL.

For targeted inspection, the agent uses smithery tool list to explore tool groups hierarchically, for example drilling down into github issues, keeping token overhead low by avoiding massive bulk schema dumps. Before invoking mutations, smithery tool get verifies the exact JSON schema for input parameters. Finally, smithery tool call dispatches the tool call using validated payloads and returns the output to the active agent context.

Architectural Boundaries Between Skill and CLI Binary

This catalog record represents the instructional skill, not the executable binary or an isolated server daemon. To leverage the workflows defined here, the host system must have the smithery executable available via global npm installation. For authentication against secured services, the skill directs the agent to initiate browser-based confirmation via smithery auth login rather than attempting automated credential guessing.

Security Controls and Permission Boundaries

Because dynamic tool discovery can grant an agent mutating powers across external third-party infrastructure, such as deleting database rows or merging pull requests, security safeguards are strictly codified. Agents are instructed never to execute state-changing actions without explicit human approval. Furthermore, local authentication credentials and access tokens generated by the CLI must remain strictly within protected local credential vaults and never surface in chat histories or public repositories.

Licensing and Catalog Status

The repository is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPL-3.0). On September 9, 2026, the GitHub repository recorded 833 stars. This count represents repository-wide adoption rather than a sub-path metric. The skill and CLI are freely available for open-source workflows. Individual remote endpoints hosted via third-party registries may operate under their own terms of service, which is why Skill Road does not cite fixed pricing in this public entry.