MCP CLI Agent Skill

Interface for MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers via CLI. Use when you need to interact with external tools, APIs, or data sources through MCP servers, list available MCP servers/tools, or call MCP tools from command line.

634 tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

37394

stars on the repo

on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot --skill mcp-cli

The instruction itself

6 sections, as written by the author

MCP-CLI

Access MCP servers through the command line. MCP enables interaction with external systems like GitHub, filesystems, databases, and APIs.

Commands

| Command | Output |

| ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------- |

| mcp-cli | List all servers and tool names |

| mcp-cli <server> | Show tools with parameters |

| mcp-cli <server>/<tool> | Get tool JSON schema |

| mcp-cli <server>/<tool> '<json>' | Call tool with arguments |

| mcp-cli grep "<glob>" | Search tools by name |

Add -d to include descriptions (e.g., mcp-cli filesystem -d)

Workflow

Discover: mcp-cli → see available servers and tools
Explore: mcp-cli <server> → see tools with parameters
Inspect: mcp-cli <server>/<tool> → get full JSON input schema
Execute: mcp-cli <server>/<tool> '<json>' → run with arguments

Examples

# List all servers and tool names
mcp-cli

# See all tools with parameters
mcp-cli filesystem

# With descriptions (more verbose)
mcp-cli filesystem -d

# Get JSON schema for specific tool
mcp-cli filesystem/read_file

# Call the tool
mcp-cli filesystem/read_file '{"path": "./README.md"}'

# Search for tools
mcp-cli grep "*file*"

# JSON output for parsing
mcp-cli filesystem/read_file '{"path": "./README.md"}' --json

# Complex JSON with quotes (use heredoc or stdin)
mcp-cli server/tool <<EOF
{"content": "Text with 'quotes' inside"}
EOF

# Or pipe from a file/command
cat args.json | mcp-cli server/tool

# Find all TypeScript files and read the first one
mcp-cli filesystem/search_files '{"path": "src/", "pattern": "*.ts"}' --json | jq -r '.content[0].text' | head -1 | xargs -I {} sh -c 'mcp-cli filesystem/read_file "{\"path\": \"{}\"}"'

Options

| Flag | Purpose |

| ------------ | ------------------------- |

| -j, --json | JSON output for scripting |

| -r, --raw | Raw text content |

| -d | Include descriptions |

Exit Codes

0: Success
1: Client error (bad args, missing config)
2: Server error (tool failed)
3: Network error

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How to use it

Copy the folder

Take github/mcp-cli from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.