MCP Server: Getting Started

android-skills-mcp is an MCP server that exposes Google's android/skills library to any MCP capable client. It speaks stdio, ships a bundled snapshot of the skills, and boots in under 200 ms.

Install

You add the server once per machine. After that, any project you open in any supported client can search and pull skills on demand.

Claude Code

claude mcp add android-skills -- npx -y android-skills-mcp

This writes to ~/.claude.json. To install at project scope instead, edit .mcp.json at your project root:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "android-skills": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "android-skills-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Edit .cursor/mcp.json at your project root, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for a global install:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "android-skills": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "android-skills-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Codex CLI

Add to your Codex MCP config (location varies by version):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "android-skills": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "android-skills-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf and other MCP clients

Anywhere you can register an MCP server with a stdio command, run:

npx -y android-skills-mcp

Verify the install

In your client, ask an Android question. The model should call search_skills followed by get_skill. For example, in Claude Code:

How should I migrate my XML views to Jetpack Compose?

You should see Claude invoke search_skills with a query like "xml views to jetpack compose", get a top hit of migrate-xml-views-to-jetpack-compose, then call get_skill to read the full ten step procedure.

Smoke test the server directly

You can also exercise the server over raw stdio without any client:

printf '%s\n' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"smoke","version":"0"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized"}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}' \
  | npx -y android-skills-mcp

You should see two JSON RPC responses on stdout: the initialize response with capabilities, and a tools/list response with three tools.

What the server provides

The server registers three tools and one resource template. See Tools for the full schema of each tool, and Resources for how the skill:// URI scheme works.

Surface	Count	Purpose
Tools	3	list_skills, search_skills, get_skill
Resources	6	skill://<name> for every skill in the catalog