<p align="center"> <img src="assets/skill-vault.png" width="200" alt="Skill Vault"> </p>

<h1 align="center">Skill Vault</h1>

<p align="center"> <b>A self-hostable, semantic skill registry for AI agents — over a single MCP endpoint.</b><br/> Query the skills you need when you need them. Keep context small. Trust what you pull. </p>

<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0"><img alt="License: Apache-2.0" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/license-Apache--2.0-blue.svg"></a> <a href="https://www.python.org/"><img alt="Python" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/python-3.11+-3776AB.svg"></a> <a href="https://www.python.org/"><img alt="MCP" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/MCP-FastMCP-8A2BE2.svg"></a> <a href="https://pytest.org/"><img alt="Tests" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/tests-111%20passing-brightgreen.svg"></a> <a href="https://pytest.org/"><img alt="Coverage" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/coverage-88%25-brightgreen.svg"></a> <a href="https://github.com/vikasudasi/skill-vault/actions"><img alt="CI" src="https://img.shields.io/github/actions/workflow/status/vikasudasi/skill-vault/ci.yml?branch=main"></a> </p>

---

Skill Vault

Stop shipping a thousand skill files into your agent's context. Point your agent at one MCP endpoint; it pulls exactly the skills it needs, on demand, and can verify they haven't been tampered with.

• One endpoint. search_skills("postgres schema migration") → ranked, lightweight skill cards → get_skill(id) for the full body only when needed.
• Private + public. Every agent gets its own personal skill vault and read access to a curated global store.
• Trusted supply chain. Skills are content-addressed (sha256) and optionally ed25519-signed. A verified tier means a curator vouched for the content — not just that someone uploaded it.
• Self-hosted. SQLite + local embeddings + optional pgvector. No managed service, no third party sees your skills, no per-query cost.

---

<details> <summary><b>📚 Table of Contents</b></summary>

1. The Problem
2. The Solution
3. Features
4. Why Skill Vault (positioning vs skills-mcp / agentregistry)
5. Architecture
6. Quickstart
7. MCP Configuration
8. Trust & Security Model
9. API Reference
10. CLI
11. Roadmap
12. FAQ
13. Contributing
14. License

</details>

---

The Problem

Every skill costs context. Progressive-disclosure skill systems pay roughly ~50 tokens per skill just to keep the description in context, and far more for the full instructions.

# of skills in context	~tokens of pure skill metadata
100	5k
1,000	50k
10,000	500k+ — exceeds most context windows

Local skill files don't sync across machines, teams, or agents. Thousands of files also become a maintenance nightmare — duplicated, stale, unversioned, and unverified (you have no idea who wrote them or whether they're safe to follow).

---

The Solution

Skill Vault is a registry + retrieval layer, not another file format.

• Skills live in a centralized, versioned, content-addressed store.
• The agent wires in exactly one MCP endpoint.
• search_skills(query) returns light cards (name + one-liner + trust tier + cosine score) — cheap.
• get_skill(id) returns the full SKILL.md body only for the skill the agent actually wants.
• A personal vault lets each agent push its own hard-won capabilities and pull them back anywhere, alongside the curated global library.

The result: an agent with access to 10,000 skills carries only ~50 tokens of registry description in context, and retrieves the one it needs at the moment it needs it.

---

Features

• 🧭 Semantic search — local all-MiniLM-L6-v2 embeddings (384-d) over skill name, description, tags, and triggers; ranked by cosine similarity. Embed metadata, not whole bodies, to keep the index small.
• 🔑 Per-agent identity — API keys (sha256-at-rest, shown once at onboarding) with global / personal / owner-only scope enforcement at the tool layer.
• 📦 Private skill vaults — every agent publishes and retrieves its own skills; cross-agent private access is always denied.
• 🔏 Trust & supply chain — sha256 content hashing (integrity pin) + optional ed25519 signatures. Trust tiers: verified (curator-signed) · user (owner's own) · public (community).
• 🧬 Versioned & immutable — skills are versioned, content-addressed, forward-only. Previous versions remain addressable and hash-pinned.
• 🖥️ Web dashboard + homepage — agent management, onboarding, per-agent skill browser, key rotation/revocation, and a ready-to-copy /configure guide.
• 🍱 17 curated seed skills (with one verified sample) so the registry is useful out of the box.
• 🚀 Self-hosted & transport-flexible — stdio for local agents, streamable-HTTP/SSE for remote. SQLite + sqlite-vec by default; pgvector drop-in for scale-out.

---

Why Skill Vault

There are two adjacent tools worth benchmarking against. We occupy the open middle: self-hosted + per-agent identity + verifiable supply chain.

Dimension	Skill Vault	skills-mcp	agentregistry
Hosting	Self-hosted (your infra)	Managed (Cloudflare Worker)	Self-hosted (org)
Vector store	SQLite + sqlite-vec (or pgvector)	Qdrant (managed)	Varies
Embeddings	Local, free, private	Managed API	—
Per-agent identity	✅ Yes (API key, hash-at-rest)	❌ No (shared public library)	Partially (org accounts)
Private per-agent vault	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ Not per-agent
Trust / supply chain	✅ verified/user/public + ed25519 sigs	⚠️ Limited	⚠️ Governance only
Content integrity	✅ sha256 + client verification	❌	⚠️
Skill versioning	✅ Immutable versions	Partially	Yes
Primary purpose	Capability registry + retrieval	Shared free skill library	Org catalog/governance

The short version: skills-mcp is a big shared library with no identity and no verification; agentregistry is org governance with no per-agent personal vaults. Skill Vault is both a personal capability vault and a verifiable public registry — for a single agent or a whole team, on your own hardware.

---

Architecture

flowchart LR
    subgraph "Your Agent"
        A[AI Agent / LLM]
    end

    subgraph "Skill Vault"
        MCP["MCP endpoint<br/><b>skill-vault serve</b><br/>stdio / streamable-http"]
        TOOLS["MCP Tools<br/>search · get · publish · update<br/>delete · list_mine · list_global"]
        AUTH["Auth<br/>API-key resolve · scope<br/>rate-limit"]
        INDEX["Semantic Index<br/>embeddings + cosine rank"]
        TRUST["Trust Layer<br/>sha256 hash · ed25519 sig<br/>verified/user/public"]
        DB[("SQLite<br/>skills · versions · keys · trust<br/>+ sqlite-vec sidecar")]

        WEB["Web + Dashboard<br/><b>skill-vault web</b><br/>FastAPI / uvicorn"]

        MCP --> TOOLS
        TOOLS --> AUTH
        TOOLS --> INDEX
        TOOLS --> TRUST
        TOOLS --> DB
        INDEX --> DB
        TRUST --> DB
        MCP --- WEB
        WEB --> DB
    end

    A -->|"one endpoint"| MCP
    A -.->|"retrieve SKILL.md content"| GET["get_skill(id)"]

Flow: the agent calls the MCP endpoint once → the tool layer authenticates the caller and enforces scope → the semantic index ranks matching skill cards → the trust layer reports + verifies integrity → SQLite persists everything. For full-body retrieval, get_skill(id) re-derives the content hash and refuses to return tampered content.

Two processes share one data path: skill-vault serve (MCP, :8000/mcp) and skill-vault web (dashboard, :8080).

---

Quickstart

From source

git clone https://github.com/vikasudasi/skill-vault.git
cd skill-vault
make install              # creates .venv + installs deps

# 1. Initialize the database
.venv/bin/skill-vault init

# 2. Seed the curated library (17 skills, incl. 1 verified)
.venv/bin/skill-vault seed

# 3. Run the local MCP server (stdio) for one agent
.venv/bin/skill-vault serve

For a remote/HTTP setup (web + MCP):

.venv/bin/skill-vault serve --transport streamable-http   # :8000/mcp
.venv/bin/skill-vault web                                  # :8080

Docker

docker compose up --build
# MCP streamable-http: http://localhost:8000/mcp
# Dashboard:          http://localhost:8080/dashboard

Create your first agent + key

.venv/bin/skill-vault onboard --name "my-agent"
# prints a raw api key (sv_...) ONCE — save it

Or via the dashboard: http://<host>:8080/dashboard/onboard

---

MCP Configuration

Add Skill Vault to any MCP-capable client. Server name: skill-vault.

Local / stdio

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "skill-vault": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/.venv/bin/skill-vault",
      "args": ["serve"]
    }
  }
}

Remote / streamable-http

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "skill-vault": {
      "url": "https://your-host/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer sv_YOUR_AGENT_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Auth note: Skill Vault passes the agent key as a per-tool argument (agent_key=...) for private/global operations — no connection-level key header is strictly required. On streamable-http, forward the Authorization header for convenience.

On the running instance, the /configure page renders copy-paste-ready snippets for both transports.

---

Trust & Security Model

Integrity (content-addressed)

Every skill version stores content_hash = sha256(canonical(skill)). On get_skill, the server re-derives the hash and compares — if the stored body doesn't match its pin, the server raises SV_INTEGRITY and never returns tampered content.

Signatures (verifiable supply chain)

Skills can additionally carry an ed25519 signature over the canonical payload, produced by a curator holding SKILL_VAULT_CURATOR_KEY. Consumers call verify (or read the verified flag on get_skill) before following a pulled skill.

Trust tiers

Tier	Meaning
verified	Curator-signed — a known verifier vouched for the exact content
user	Owner's own personal skill
public	Community/global, unsigned

Hosts control what they serve via SKILL_VAULT_TRUST_ALLOW (default verified,user). The trust scope/crypto is policy-driven so enterprise governance (RBAC/audit/policy) can be layered on without rearchitecting.

Security posture

• API keys stored sha256-hashed only — raw keys never persisted, shown once at onboarding.
• Per-key rate limiting on the public endpoint.
• Dashboard uses HTTP Basic with credentials distinct from agent keys.
• Remote access expected behind TLS (Caddy/nginx/Traefik) — see Deployment.
• Vulnerability reporting: see SECURITY.md.

---

API Reference

All tools return a JSON tool-result. Errors use stable codes.

Code	Meaning
SV_UNAUTHENTICATED	Missing/invalid agent key
SV_FORBIDDEN	Valid key, no access (cross-agent/private)
SV_NOT_FOUND	Skill/version not found
SV_INVALID_SKILL	Malformed skill / missing required frontmatter
SV_INTEGRITY	Content hash mismatch (tamper)
SV_RATE_LIMITED	Key over quota
SV_CONFLICT	Duplicate name in scope

search_skills(query, scope="global", limit=10, min_trust=None, agent_key=None)

Semantic search. Returns lightweight cards (id, name, description, tags, trust, score, version). scope: global (no key needed) · all / personal (requires agent_key).

get_skill(id, version=None, agent_key=None)

Full SKILL.md body + {trust, verified, content_hash}. Re-verifies integrity; raises SV_INTEGRITY on mismatch. Global skills readable by anyone; personal only by owner.

publish_skill(skill, visibility="personal", agent_key)

skill = {name, description, tags[], triggers[], body, meta{}}. Creates a new skill (version 1, hashed, user or public tier). SV_CONFLICT if name exists in the agent's scope — use update_skill.

update_skill(id, skill, agent_key)

Owner/curator only. Appends a new immutable version (version = max+1), updates current_version_id. Previous versions stay addressable and hash-pinned.

delete_skill(id, agent_key)

Owner-only removal (keeps version history for audit).

list_my_skills(agent_key, scope="all")

Cards (no bodies) for the authenticated agent's personal vault (+ optionally global).

list_global_skills(limit=20, offset=0)

Paged cards from the curated global store — no key needed.

---

CLI

skill-vault init          Initialize DB + apply migrations
skill-vault migrate       Apply pending forward-only migrations
skill-vault onboard       Create an agent + issue first API key (shown once)
skill-vault whoami        Resolve an API key to an identity
skill-vault seed          Seed curated skills from the library (--curator-key to sign)
skill-vault reindex       (Re)embed skill versions into the vector index
skill-vault verify        Check integrity + signature for a skill version
skill-vault curator gen-key   Generate a curator ed25519 keypair
skill-vault serve         Run the MCP server (stdio or --transport streamable-http)
skill-vault web           Run the web dashboard (FastAPI/uvicorn)
skill-vault backup        Snapshot DB + vector sidecars
skill-vault restore       Restore a snapshot

Examples:

# Sign seed skills as verified
export SKILL_VAULT_CURATOR_KEY="<base64 ed25519 privkey>"
.venv/bin/skill-vault seed

# One-command public launcher (no systemd)
./scripts/run-public.sh

---

Roadmap

Now / current release (v0.1)

• ✅ Core MCP registry + semantic search + auth + trust
• ✅ Web dashboard, homepage, /configure
• ✅ Deployment (two-process, Docker, systemd, backup/restore)
• ✅ Test suite (111 tests, 88% cov) + CI
• ✅ Seed library (17 skills)

Next

• 📦 Release automation, signed release tags, PyPI publishing
• 🧪 More curated skills + community submission flow
• 🔬 pgvector backend hardening + horizontal scale notes
• 📊 Usage analytics / skill health signals

Later (open-core tier, monetization deferred)

• 🔐 Org governance: SSO, RBAC, audit, compliance policies
• 🤖 Shared public library federation / multi-tenant hosting
• 🔌 Native agent integrations beyond the MCP tool surface

---

FAQ

Q: How is this different from just pasting a folder of skills into my agent? A: A folder floods context with every skill's description (~50 tokens each) and doesn't sync or verify. Skill Vault keeps only a tiny registry endpoint in context and retrieves the one skill you need at the moment — verified.

Q: Do I need a GPU or an embedding API key? A: No. Embeddings run locally via all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (sentence-transformers). Works on a CPU-only box.

Q: Is my data sent anywhere? A: No third party by default. Everything runs on your host; the default vector backend is local SQLite. (If you opt into pgvector, it goes to your own Postgres.)

Q: Who can see my personal skills? A: Only you. Cross-agent private access is always rejected at the tool layer, and scope filtering happens at query time.

Q: What does "verified" actually mean? A: A skill with a valid ed25519 signature from a curator whose public key you trust. It proves the exact content you pulled is what the curator signed — nothing more, nothing less.

Q: Can one agent access another agent's vault? A: No, unless the skills are global. Personal scope is owner-only, always.

Q: How do I run this in production? A: See Deployment — two processes behind a TLS reverse proxy, with systemd units and a no-systemd fallback launcher.

---

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

Quick pointers:

• Python ≥ 3.11, from __future__ import annotations, type hints throughout.
• Run the gates before submitting: make check (ruff + format + mypy) and pytest with ≥85% coverage.
• Add skills to skill_vault/data/skills/ (see the format of existing entries) and run skill-vault seed to ingest.
• Open an issue first for behaviour changes; keep PRs focused.

---

License

Copyright © 2026 Vik Udasi. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE. You may use, modify, and distribute this software, including in commercial products; attribution required.