Variant Open Skills

This repo is based on the Variant Claude plugin marketplace template.

Collection of different skills and tools that some consultants in Variant have found useful.

Contains plugins:

• Handbook - Get information from Variant Handbook. Get information on everything from gadget budget to sick days.
• Code - Various skills for code projects. Like reviewing, learning new things, specing tasks etc. Work in progress.

Use skills from this template

Use skills from plugins in this repo by connecting marketplace to Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add varianter/skills-open

# Installing everything from the Handbook plugin
/plugin install handbook@variant-skills

Or adding the skills specifically:

npx skills add varianter/skills-open

# list all
npx skills add varianter/skills-open --list

Keep in mind that if you add a skill that refers to MCP tools outside of Claude marketplace, you would have to connect to MCP server manually.

Contributing

Adding a skill

Create plugins/standard/skills/<name>/SKILL.md. If the skill needs MCP tools, add them under plugins/standard/skills/<name>/tools/:

---
name: my-skill
description: One-line description shown in the skill picker
---

Skill instructions here.

Validate it:

pnpm validate-skill plugins/standard/skills/my-skill

Adding an MCP tool

Create plugins/standard/tools/<name>/<toolName>.ts with an explicit registrar:

import type { McpServer } from '@variant/mcp-server';
import { z } from 'zod';

export function registerMyTool(server: McpServer): void {
  server.registerTool(
    'my-tool',
    { title: 'My Tool', description: 'Does something useful', inputSchema: { param: z.string() } },
    async ({ param }) => ({ content: [{ type: 'text', text: param }] }),
  );
}

Then add it to plugins/standard/mcp-server/registerTools.ts:

import { definePluginTools } from '@variant/mcp-server';
import { registerMyTool } from '../tools/my-tool/myTool.js';

export const registerTools = definePluginTools([registerMyTool]);

For skill-colocated tools (tools under a skill's tools/ directory) see AGENTS.md.

Note: You can also use the create-plugin-skill skill in .agents/skills/create-plugin-skill/SKILL.md to generate a new skill directory with the correct structure.

Adding a new plugin

1. Copy plugins/standard/ to plugins/<name>/
2. Update plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json and plugins/<name>/package.json
3. Add the new plugin to .claude-plugin/marketplace.json
4. Add it to the plugin matrices in .github/workflows/ci.yml and .github/workflows/deploy.yml

Note: You can also use the create-plugin skill in .agents/skills/create-plugin/SKILL.md to generate a new plugin directory with the correct structure.

Development commands

From the repo root:

pnpm dev [plugin]        # selected plugin — server + widget watcher (hot-reload)
pnpm dev:server [plugin] # selected plugin — server only (faster, skips widgets)
pnpm dev:standard        # standard plugin alias
pnpm build               # build all plugin servers
pnpm typecheck           # type-check workspace packages
pnpm check               # biome lint + format check
pnpm fix                 # biome auto-fix
pnpm validate-skills      # validate all skills
pnpm validate-skill <path> # validate a single skill, e.g. plugins/standard/skills/my-skill

Additional commands available from plugins/standard/:

pnpm inspect       # official MCP Inspector

Deployment

Trigger the Deploy GitHub Actions workflow from the repository UI. Select a plugin (or "all") and environment. Each plugin has its own Docker image (<plugin>-mcp) built from plugins/<plugin>/mcp-server/Dockerfile.

Docker builds install @variant/mcp-server from npm, so publish the package before building images from this template.

Update the registry and deployment target in .github/workflows/deploy.yml to match your infrastructure.

See CLAUDE.md for the full structure reference and AGENTS.md for the tool authoring guide.