cao-mcp-apps

cao-mcp-apps is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator. It costs 137 tokens per session (1,974 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for CAO MCP Apps, which are interactive views rendered inside MCP-compatible hosts such as Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, or VS Code Copilot. It covers the fleet dashboard and related status views.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to turn on MCP Apps, rebuild their bundles, add new `ui://cao/` views, or work with the CAO fleet dashboard and event stream.
Why use it?
It explains how to enable, build, and troubleshoot CAO's host-rendered interface when those views do not appear or behave correctly.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex ✓ vendor

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it to turn on MCP Apps, rebuild their bundles, add new ui://cao/ views, or work with the CAO fleet dashboard and event stream.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps
About the project

CLI Agent Orchestrator is a tool that coordinates multiple AI coding command-line programs by running them as separate workers in isolated terminal sessions. A supervisor uses it to delegate software tasks to specialist agents in parallel or in sequence while the workers retain their normal command-line capabilities. The catalogue skills operate this orchestration workflow.

awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator · 1,243 stars · on GitHub · awslabs.github.io

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator --skill cao-mcp-apps
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cao-mcp-apps

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cao-mcp-apps

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-mcp-apps.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 137 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,974 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00137 $0.01974
Opus 5 $0.00068 $0.00987
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00395
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00197

Measured 10d ago against content hash f8c0080283b9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cao-mcp-apps scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/validate.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

build and is the quickest smoke test (`curl /widgets/topology/topology.html`).
skills/cao-mcp-apps/SKILL.md · 134 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CAO MCP Apps

Operator + developer playbook for CAO's host-rendered fleet UI. Reference docs: docs/mcp-apps.md; example: examples/mcp-apps/.

Authoritative spec & sources of truth: MCP Apps Overview · Build an MCP App · capability negotiation · client matrix · stable spec 2026-01-26/apps.mdx (SEP-1865, Status: Stable) · SDK @modelcontextprotocol/ext-apps v1.7.4 (API ref · repo) · provenance PR #1865.

Turn it on

The surface is default-off. Enable and run:

export CAO_MCP_APPS_ENABLED=true
uv run cao-server        # :9889 (REST + SSE /events)
uv run cao-mcp-server    # registers tools/resources via the mcp_apps plugin

It is packaged as the built-in mcp_apps plugin (cao.plugins entry-point). The plugin's on_mcp_server hook registers the ui://cao/* resources, the five app tools, the topology widget, and advertises the io.modelcontextprotocol/ui capability — best-effort and default-off, so nothing changes when the flag is unset.

What the operator gets

  • ui://cao/dashboard — fleet overview + the mutation entry point.
  • ui://cao/agent — one terminal's status, output tail, inbox, sub-agents.
  • ui://cao/event-stream — live governance ticker (app-only).
  • cao://widget/topology + /widgets/topology/ — build-free live event view.

All mutations flow through submit_command(kind, payload) — kinds: send_message, assign, create_session (standard); interrupt, pause, resume (lifecycle); shutdown_session (destructive). For full payload schemas and scope requirements per kind, see references/submit-command-kinds.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 134 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 134 lines · 137 tokens per session scan A f8c0080283b9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cao-mcp-apps is a skill published in the GitHub repository awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator (1,243 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 137 tokens to every session and 1,974 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.