build-mcp

build-mcp is a skill for Claude Code from techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit. It costs 124 tokens per session (2,731 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for building an MCP server. MCP, or Model Context Protocol, lets an AI agent use tools that connect to an outside service.

In plain words
What is it for?
Wrapping an API or service as agent tools, then building, deploying, and preparing the server to operate.
Why use it?
It helps decide who the server is for, where it should run, and how it should be delivered before implementation begins.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; names the AskUserQuestion tool; mentions Claude Code.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the tool-build-kit plugin — 2 skills shipped together

Good fit Wrapping an API or service as agent tools, then building, deploying, and preparing the server to operate.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit
Claude Code
/plugin install tool-build-kit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install tool-build-kit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 2 skills.

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 build-mcp

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit/build-mcp.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit/build-mcp)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit/build-mcp"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit/build-mcp.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 124 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,731 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.
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 $0.00124 $0.02731
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.01366
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00546
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00273

Measured 8d ago against content hash e37bcb7db982, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

build-mcp 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.

plugins/tool-build-kit/skills/build-mcp/SKILL.md · 128 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 128 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Build MCP

Build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server the right way, end to end. The defining move of this skill: establish the user's context with AskUserQuestion before building anything, then tailor every phase to that context. A personal local server and a public hosted server share almost no steps past "build", so branch early and commit to the branch.

How this relates to mcp-builder

The Anthropic example-skills:mcp-builder skill is the gold-standard reference for the implementation itself: FastMCP and TypeScript SDK patterns, tool design, input/output schemas, annotations, error handling, and evaluation. Do not duplicate it. This skill is the scope-and-distribution wrapper around it: it decides what to build, for whom, where it runs, and how it ships. When you reach the build phase, invoke example-skills:mcp-builder for the deep implementation guidance and keep this skill's references thin.

The five phases

  1. Analyze: understand the service to wrap and pick the right tool boundaries.
  2. Build: scaffold and implement the server (delegates to mcp-builder).
  3. Deploy: get it running and registered for the target runtime.
  4. Scale: harden and operate it (only substantive for hosted servers).
  5. Distribute: make it reachable by the intended audience.

Run them in order. The AskUserQuestion answers from Phase 0 gate phases 3, 4, and 5.

Phase 0: Establish context (AskUserQuestion, do this first)

Before analyzing or writing anything, branch on the user's context. Ask the audience question first; it is the headline decision and it cascades into everything downstream. Then ask runtime only if it is still ambiguous, and ask language after Analyze (so you can recommend based on the wrapped service).

Question 1 (always, ask first): Audience / scope:

Use AskUserQuestion:

  • header: "Audience"
  • question: "Who is this MCP server for? This decides how we deploy and distribute it."
  • options:
    1. "Just me": personal local tool on my machine.
    2. "My team / org": shared internally, installed by colleagues.
    3. "Public / external": published openly for anyone to install.

Read the full file on GitHub · 128 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 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. 8d ago First seen · 128 lines · 124 tokens per session scan A e37bcb7db982

Subscribe to this mod's changes

build-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository techwolf-ai/ai-first-toolkit (98 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 124 tokens to every session and 2,731 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.