mcps-skill_skill

Overview

This skill is a CLI manager for MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that lets you register, run, and call server tools from the terminal. It provides daemon control, server lifecycle commands, and flexible parameter passing for tool invocation. The tool is designed for quick setup, scriptable workflows, and handling mixed parameter types safely.

How this skill works

You register servers in a JSON config (~/.mcps/mcp.json) or via mcps add commands, then run a background daemon to host connections. mcps lists and controls servers, enumerates available tools, and invokes tools with automatic JSON parsing, --raw string mode, or --json file/object input. Environment variables can be used for secrets and runtime options like port and verbose logging.

When to use it

• When you need a single CLI to manage multiple MCP servers (HTTP, SSE, stdio-backed).
• When automating tool calls from scripts, CI, or local development with consistent parameters.
• When you must pass complex JSON, raw SQL, or mixed-type parameters to remote tools.
• When you need to run a persistent daemon to host and monitor server connections.
• When you want to archive or back up server configurations and quickly re-create setups.

Best practices

• Store sensitive credentials as environment variables and reference them in the config using ${VAR_NAME}.
• Use --raw for parameters that must remain exact strings (IDs, SQL, encoded values).
• Use --json for large or nested payloads to avoid shell parsing issues and keep commands readable.
• Keep a single source config in ~/.mcps/mcp.json and use mcps ls and mcps status for quick checks.
• Start the daemon in verbose mode only when debugging to avoid noisy logs in normal operation.

Example use cases

• Web scraping: register a fetch stdio server and call fetch url="https://example.com" follow_redirects=true.
• Database operations: call a Postgres server query with auto-parsed booleans or --raw for SQL strings.
• Tool discovery: list available tools with mcps tools <server> or mcps tools <server> --simple for names only.
• Server maintenance: add, disable, restart, or remove servers with mcps add, update --disabled true, restart, and rm.
• CI integration: script mcps call commands with --json payloads for repeatable automated tasks.