What is mps-distribution-build?

A guide to the Ant build process that packages Java and Kotlin plugins into MPS distribution archives. MPS is a language workbench, and Ant is a build tool that runs scripted packaging steps.

It helps add plugins to the distribution, connect their build projects to the main archive, trace generated artifact locations, and update the source model before regenerating Ant files.

It helps locate why a plugin builds successfully but is missing from the final archive and prevents permanent edits to generated build files.

How JetBrains/MPS configures Claude Code and Codex

About the project

JetBrains MPS is a development environment for creating domain-specific languages, which are programming languages designed for a particular field or task. It provides editors with features such as completion, semantic checks, and type checking, and can generate code in languages including Java and XML.

JetBrains/MPS · 1,656 stars · on GitHub · jetbrains.com

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to JetBrains/MPS. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JetBrains/MPS/master/.agents/skills/mps-distribution-build/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JetBrains/MPS

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jetbrains/mps/mps-distribution-build.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jetbrains/mps/mps-distribution-build)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jetbrains/mps/mps-distribution-build"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jetbrains/mps/mps-distribution-build.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 100 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,203 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00100	$0.02203
Opus 5	$0.00050	$0.01102
Sonnet 5	$0.00020	$0.00441
Haiku 4.5	$0.00010	$0.00220

Measured 8d ago against content hash 57ace86a00cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mps-distribution-build scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 8d ago.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.agents/skills/mps-distribution-build/SKILL.md · 79 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MPS Distribution Build — Ant Pipeline & Plugin Bundling

This skill explains how the generated Ant scripts under build/mps*.xml assemble MPS distribution archives, and how to add a new plain Java/Kotlin plugin module (e.g. plugins/mcp-tools) so it ends up in the produced archives. Authoring the model that generates these Ant scripts is covered separately by mps-build-language — this skill focuses on the output side and the plugin-bundling touchpoints.

Critical Directives

The Ant files are generated. All build/mps*.xml files carry . Do not hand-edit them as a permanent solution — author the change in plugins/mps-build/solutions/mpsBuild/models/build.mps and regenerate.
A new per-plugin BuildProject is invisible to the distribution until it is also wired into the mps aggregator BuildProject and mpsDistribution. A plugin can build into build/artifacts/<projectName>/ but never enter the final zip if mps.xml is not updated.
IDEA platform jars under <MPS>/lib/ and <MPS>/plugins/<idea-plugin>/lib/ are fetched by build.xml platform (Ivy via getDependencies.xml). They do not exist on a clean checkout, and no BuildProject declares the fetch. Every per-plugin script implicitly requires ant -f build/build.xml platform to have already run.
There is no ${idea.plugins.dir} macro — do not invent one. Reference fetched IDEA-plugin jars via ${basedir}/plugins/<idea-plugin>/lib/ (matches the IDEA project libraries under .idea/libraries/*.xml).
The test/ source root is not part of the production jar. Test compilation belongs in a sibling test-only BuildProject (cf. mpsTesting.xml), not layered onto the production jar.
Validate cheap first: regenerate, then run ant -f build/<projectName>.xml assemble in isolation before running the full build/run_build.sh.

Common-Path Workflow — Bundle a New Plain Java/Kotlin Plugin

Running example: bundling plugins/mcp-tools (a JAVA_MODULE with Kotlin sources, depending on com.intellij.mcpServer).

Read the full file on GitHub · 79 lines

Files

What ships with it

9 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.

8d ago First seen · 79 lines · 100 tokens per session scan A 57ace86a00cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mps-distribution-build is a skill published in the GitHub repository JetBrains/MPS (1,656 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 100 tokens to every session and 2,203 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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MPS: Skill for Claude Code