toolbase 0.2.0

The community registry and CLI for AI agent toolkits - discover, share, and serve tools to AI agents over MCP

toolbase

The package manager and runtime for AI agent tools. Publish toolkits to the Toolbase registry and use them in coding agents (Claude Code, Codex) or any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol. Toolkits span any domain, from web and data utilities to scientific categories like astro, hep, and quantum.

A toolkit is the publishable unit; it bundles one or more tools an agent can call. Each toolkit installs into its own isolated Python environment, so dependency conflicts between toolkits are never a problem.

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Quickstart

pip install toolbase

# Install a toolkit from the registry (global by default)
tb install arxiv-search

# Expose it to the agent (installing alone serves nothing)
tb activate arxiv-search

# Wire toolbase into Claude Code (writes its MCP config for you)
tb connect claude-code

# See what's installed and what's active
tb list

tb is a shorter alias for toolbase; both ship with the package and behave identically.

Install, then activate. Installing places a toolkit in the cache but does not serve it — nothing reaches the agent until you tb activate it (conda-style: install ≠ activate). tb install -a arxiv-search does both in one step. Use tb deactivate to hide a toolkit, bundle, or tool again.

Installs are global by default (-g). Use -l to pin a toolkit into the current project's .toolbase/manifest.yaml instead — the binary still lives in the shared global cache, only the pin is project-scoped, so a collaborator who clones the project and runs tb install (no args) gets the same toolkits at the same versions.

tb connect replaces hand-editing MCP config. It writes the toolbase server entry into Claude Code's config (~/.claude.json for user scope, .mcp.json for -l project scope). Claude Code then spawns its own toolbase serve subprocess and discovers the active profile's tools. To watch tool calls fire in real time, run tb logs in another terminal. (If you'd rather wire it by hand, the entry is {"mcpServers": {"toolbase": {"command": "toolbase", "args": ["serve"]}}}.)

Curating what the agent sees

tb activate / tb deactivate edit the active profile — a named curated set of tools. Three granularities:

tb activate heptapod                 # the whole toolkit
tb activate heptapod/pythia          # one bundle (a coherent group of tools)
tb activate heptapod__run_pythia     # one specific tool

Most users only ever touch the default profile via these commands. Power users can keep several named profiles (tb profile create paper, tb connect claude-code --profile paper) and switch between them. Run tb profile tools to see the bundles and tools a toolkit offers.

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Authoring a toolkit

tb init my-toolkit              # scaffold from template
# tb init my-toolkit --with-setup   # if your toolkit needs a setup.py
cd my-toolkit
# write your tools in tools/ ; write skills in skills/
tb validate                     # check structure
tb login                        # one-time, browser-flow auth (per-user)
tb publish                      # ship it (auto-registers on first run)

tb publish registers the toolkit on the registry on its first run — no separate step. If the name isn't registered yet, it prompts you (using the metadata in toolkit.yaml) and registers it before uploading. tb create is still available if you want to reserve a name without uploading code yet, but it's no longer required.

tb login (no toolkit name) does a browser-flow that gives you a per-user token good for any toolkit you own or collaborate on. Legacy per-toolkit tokens are still accepted (tb login my-toolkit) but deprecated.

Iterating locally. To develop a toolkit's code without a publish→install round-trip on every change, install it editable:

cd my-toolkit
tb install -e . -a              # live symlink to this source dir, and activate it
# edit tools/, restart your agent session — edits are live

An editable install symlinks your source into the cache and builds the environment there (your source tree stays clean — no .venv written into it). Edits to your tool source appear on the next serve. If you change dependencies, re-run tb install -e . to rebuild the env.

For the agent-assisted authoring flow (recommended for first toolkits), see https://toolbase-ai.com/docs/scaffold-with-an-agent.

For the full author guide — toolkit layout, tool conventions, skills, bundles, expected_toolkits, configuration — see https://toolbase-ai.com/docs/authoring and https://toolbase-ai.com/docs/configuration.

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What's in toolbase

Commands:

• init, create, ingest, validate, login, whoami, logout, publish — author and ship toolkits.
• search, install, uninstall, list — manage installed toolkits. install takes -g (global, the default), -l (pin into this project), -e <path> (editable, live symlink to a local source), or -a (also activate). list takes -v for a per-tool served/hidden view.
• activate / deactivate — expose or hide a toolkit, bundle (toolkit/bundle), or tool (toolkit__tool) in the active profile.
• connect <client> / disconnect <client> — write (or remove) toolbase in an agent client's MCP config (claude-code in v1). --list shows where it's wired; --clients lists supported targets.
• serve — run the active profile's tools as an MCP stdio server (--profile, --dry-run, --call-timeout). Normally spawned by the client, not run by hand.
• profile <list|show|create|edit|delete|set-default|path|tools> — manage named profiles (curated tool sets).
• setup <toolkit> — run a toolkit's setup.py (--reset, --check).
• config <show|edit|path|set|unset|validate> — manage per-toolkit config files at ~/.toolbase/config/<toolkit>.yaml.
• logs — tail the serve log with Rich coloring.

Features:

• Editable installs. tb install -e <path> symlinks a local toolkit source into the cache so serve loads tools live — the pip install -e . parallel for the toolkit dev loop. The env is built and cached; only the source is symlinked, so your source tree stays clean.
• Multi-version installs + per-project pinning. Different versions of a toolkit coexist in the global cache; each project pins which version it uses in a git-committed .toolbase/manifest.yaml. The binary lives once in the shared cache (-g/-l choose the manifest scope, not the file location).
• Configuration system. Toolkits declare a config: block in toolkit.yaml (seven types: string, secret, path, integer, float, boolean, choice); users fill it at install time or by editing ~/.toolbase/config/<toolkit>.yaml. Toolkits with more involved setup ship a setup.py with full prompts, downloads (resumable, SHA256-verified, auto-extracting tar/zip with zip-slip defense), and derived-state writes via ctx.set_config(...).
• Per-user auth. toolbase login does a browser-flow that stores a per-user token good for any toolkit you own or collaborate on. Legacy per-toolkit tokens still work but are deprecated.
• Multi-tier execution: same-Python toolkits run in venv, different-Python toolkits run under conda (auto-detected). Docker mode coming in 3B.
• Profiles: curated tool sets assembled across toolkits at toolkit / bundle / tool granularity, stored one-file-per-profile under .toolbase/profiles/. Activate with tb activate; the active profile is chosen by default.profile in ~/.toolbase/serve.yaml (or a project-level override).
• Skills surfacing: a toolkit's skills/*.md files are auto-mirrored to ~/.claude/skills/ so Claude Code discovers them. Symlinked on POSIX for live edits, copied on Windows.
• Agent-friendly flags: every state-modifying command supports --yes, --no, --no-input. Non-TTY stdin auto-applies non-interactive behavior.
• Versioning safeguards: publish blocks "version already exists" and "version decrease" with helpful suggestions before upload.
• Crash resilience: per-toolkit subprocess auto-restart with exponential backoff. A crashed toolkit doesn't take the orchestrator down.
• Python 3.12+ required.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full release history.

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Architecture

The package has three pieces:

• CLI (this package) — installed locally, manages toolkit environments and serves tools.
• Backend (api.scitoolkit.org) — registry, auth, tarball storage.
• Website (toolbase-ai.com) — discover and manage published toolkits.

Each installed toolkit runs in its own subprocess in its own Python environment. The toolbase serve orchestrator aggregates them and exposes the union as a single MCP server upstream. Failures in one toolkit don't affect others.

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Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome at https://github.com/alexr314/toolbase.

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License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Links

• Website: https://toolbase-ai.com
• Backend API: https://api.scitoolkit.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/alexr314/toolbase
• Issues: https://github.com/alexr314/toolbase/issues