MCP and Skills

MCP servers and skills are represented as plugin-owned artifacts in SOIT. They do not have separate lifecycle systems: plugin installation, enablement, upgrade, and uninstall operations project the exported artifacts into the runtime, and plugin versions and releases govern their history.

This page covers MCP servers that SOIT calls. To let MCP clients such as Claude Code or Cursor call SOIT's tools, see MCP Server.

Why plugin-first

Treating skills and MCP servers as independent objects would mean three parallel lifecycles to version, release, audit, and govern. SOIT collapses them into one: a skill or MCP server is declared in a plugin's spec.exports, stored as a plugin_installed_artifact (artifact_kind: skill | mcp_server), and inherits the plugin's version, release ledger, enablement state, and governance boundary. One lifecycle, one audit trail, one place to look.

When to use MCP and skills

Use MCP when external tools or resources should be exposed through the Model Context Protocol — for example, connecting an existing MCP server that provides enterprise system access.
Use skills when packaged operational knowledge or reusable capability definitions should be installed and governed as part of a plugin.

How they connect

Plugin specs declare exported MCP servers (files/mcp/<server_name>.json) and skills (files/skills/<skill_name>.json).
Runtime registry projection makes exported capabilities discoverable to agents and workflows.
Agents consume the resulting tool and capability references exactly like built-in tools — the typed binding hides the source.
Governance applies through the same permission, secret, egress, audit, and trace boundaries as every other tool: an MCP tool call is a governed run step with audit evidence.

Querying plugin-owned capabilities

There are no separate skill or MCP APIs — query through the plugin surface:

GET /api/v1/plugins?plugin_type=skill|mcp
GET /api/v1/plugins/{plugin_id}/artifacts?artifact_kind=skill|mcp_server
GET /api/v1/plugins/artifacts?artifact_kind=skill|mcp_server
GET /api/v1/plugins/capabilities?kind=skill|mcp_tool|mcp_resource

API and UI surfaces

API prefix: /api/v1/plugins
Web routes: /mcp, /skill (capability views), /plugin (lifecycle management)
The tools of enabled MCP servers are also listed and callable through /api/v1/tools and SOIT's own MCP endpoint.

Known limitations

SOIT's adapter that calls external MCP servers targets the MCP SDK v1 line and does not speak the 2026-07-28 revision to them. SOIT's own MCP endpoint serves that revision.

Plugins — the owning lifecycle.
Plugin Development — declaring exports in a package.
MCP Server — SOIT serving tools to MCP clients.