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4444Native skills support in host applications demonstrates strong demand for rich, progressively disclosed workflow instructions. MCP does not currently offer a conventional way to ship this content alongside the tools it describes, which leads to:
4545
46* **Fragmented distribution.** A server and the skill that teaches an agent to use it are versioned, discovered, and installed separately. Users installing a server from a registry have no signal that a companion skill exists. ([problem statement](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/problem-statement.md))
47* **Instruction size limits.** Server instructions are delivered as the `instructions` field of the `server/discover` result and are practically bounded in size. Complex workflows, such as the 875-line [mcpGraph skill](https://github.com/TeamSparkAI/mcpGraph/blob/main/skills/mcpgraphtoolkit/SKILL.md), do not fit this model. ([experimental findings](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/experimental-findings.md#mcpgraph-skills-in-mcp-server-repo))
46* **Fragmented distribution.** A server and the skill that teaches an agent to use it are versioned, discovered, and installed separately. Users installing a server from a registry have no signal that a companion skill exists. ([problem statement](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/problem-statement.md))
47* **Instruction size limits.** Server instructions are delivered as the `instructions` field of the `server/discover` result and are practically bounded in size. Complex workflows, such as the 875-line [mcpGraph skill](https://github.com/TeamSparkAI/mcpGraph/blob/main/skills/mcpgraphtoolkit/SKILL.md), do not fit this model. ([experimental findings](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/experimental-findings.md#mcpgraph-skills-in-mcp-server-repo))
4848* **Inconsistent ad-hoc solutions.** Absent a convention, several independent implementations have each invented their own `skill://` URI structure, with diverging semantics for authority, path, and sub-resource addressing.
4949
5050## Specification
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591591This extension introduces three protocol methods. `skills/list` and `skills/get` are implemented by every server declaring the extension, so a client only issues those calls after seeing the declaration, and a client that predates the extension never issues them. `resources/directory/read` is additionally gated behind the `directoryRead` capability setting, so a server that does not declare it never receives the call. The extension introduces no other methods, message types, or schema changes. A server that does not implement this extension simply exposes no `skill://` resources; existing clients are unaffected. A client that does not implement this extension sees `skill://` resources as ordinary resources, which they are.
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593Existing implementations using other `skill://` URI structures will need to adjust to conform. See the Working Group's [related-work survey](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/related-work.md) for a catalog. Notably, FastMCP's widely-used [SkillsProvider](https://gofastmcp.com/servers/providers/skills) diverges on URI structure, discovery (per-skill `_manifest` vs. central index), and metadata mapping; coordinating that migration is a near-term Working Group priority. These are mechanical changes, not semantic ones.
593Existing implementations using other `skill://` URI structures will need to adjust to conform. See the Working Group's [related-work survey](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/related-work.md) for a catalog. Notably, FastMCP's widely-used [SkillsProvider](https://gofastmcp.com/servers/providers/skills) diverges on URI structure, discovery (per-skill `_manifest` vs. central index), and metadata mapping; coordinating that migration is a near-term Working Group priority. These are mechanical changes, not semantic ones.
594594
595595## Security Implications
596596
597Skill content is instructional text delivered to a model, which makes it a prompt-injection surface (background in [open-questions.md §10](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/open-questions.md#10-how-should-skills-handle-security-and-trust-boundaries)). This extension imposes the following requirements:
597Skill content is instructional text delivered to a model, which makes it a prompt-injection surface (background in [open-questions.md §10](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/open-questions.md#10-how-should-skills-handle-security-and-trust-boundaries)). This extension imposes the following requirements:
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599599* **Skill content is untrusted input.** Hosts MUST treat MCP-served skill content as untrusted model input, subject to the same prompt-injection defenses applied to any server-provided text. A server being connected does not make its skill content authoritative.
600600* **Origin MUST be visible to the model.** Hosts MUST tag MCP-served skill content with its originating server identity at the point it enters model context and MUST NOT present an MCP-served skill to the model as indistinguishable from a local filesystem skill. The model, not the host, decides whether to follow a skill's instructions. Withholding origin from it makes the untrusted-input requirement above unenforceable at the layer that acts on it.
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658658* [SEP-2076]: Agent Skills as first-class primitive (alternative approach)
659659* [Skills Over MCP Working Group charter](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/community/skills-over-mcp/charter)
660660* [Decision Log](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/decisions.md): Working Group decisions and rationale
661* [Experimental Findings](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/experimental-findings.md): results from implementations (WIP)
662* [Related Work](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/related-work.md): survey of existing skill-serving implementations
663* [Skill `_meta` Keys](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/skill-meta-keys.md): `_meta` key conventions for skill resources
661* [Experimental Findings](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/experimental-findings.md): results from implementations (WIP)
662* [Related Work](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/related-work.md): survey of existing skill-serving implementations
663* [Skill `_meta` Keys](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-skills/blob/main/docs/archive/skill-meta-keys.md): `_meta` key conventions for skill resources
664664* [RFC 3986: URIs](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986)
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666666[SEP-2076]: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/pull/2076