Skills Board vs Smithery
Skills Board vs Smithery
Smithery is a public registry. It lists MCP servers and a browsable skills catalog, and it takes over the connection plumbing so an agent can reach a service without you wiring up OAuth and credentials.
Skills Board does one narrower thing: it holds the skills your own team decided to recommend, scoped to the people you invite, with the original source visible on every entry.
If your problem is connecting agents to third-party services, Smithery covers ground Skills Board does not. If your problem is that teammates cannot find what your team already recommends, that is the library.
Comparison last checked August 9, 2026. Every claim about Smithery links to a public page you can check yourself.
01 / Context
Where the registry model stops answering the question
A public catalog is organised around what is published, not around what your team chose.
- A large public listing tells you what exists, not which of those entries your colleagues actually use.
- Install counts rank the ecosystem's behaviour, not your team's.
- Publishing and distribution are the registry's centre of gravity, so there is nowhere to record the small set your team standardised on.
- Teammates using different agents still need a way to reach the same recommendation without adopting the same runtime.
- Nothing captures the note explaining why your team picked one skill and not the near-identical one next to it.
02 / Comparison
Side by side
Two products with different centres of gravity.
| Dimension | Skills Board | Smithery |
|---|---|---|
| Primary object | The skills your team recommends, saved from their original repository and path. | MCP servers and skills published to a public registry, browsable at smithery.ai/servers and smithery.ai/skills.Smithery homepageSmithery skills catalog |
| Scope of the catalog | Your team's list, as short as your team keeps it. | A public registry whose homepage invites you to browse more than 14,000 MCPs, plus a paginated public skills catalog.Smithery homepageSmithery skills catalog |
| Who curates | Your teammates, by saving what they recommend. | Publishers, with skill pages showing publisher namespaces, badges, and install counts.Smithery skills catalog |
| Access | Organization-scoped library, teammates join by invitation. | A public catalog anyone can browse.Smithery skills catalog |
| What the connection does | An authenticated MCP endpoint for reading the team library and, with the granted scopes, saving skills and organizing collections. It does not install or run skills. | Managed connections to services: when a request needs auth, Smithery handles OAuth flows, credential injection, and retries automatically.Smithery homepage |
| Ways to use a skill | Original source, install command, ZIP of the latest files, or a connected agent over MCP. | The Smithery CLI, with commands such as npx smithery mcp add and npx smithery tool call.Smithery homepage |
| Openness | MIT licensed, code public at github.com/TommyBez/skillsboard. | Smithery Connect is powered by agent.pw, described on the homepage as its open-source agent vault.Smithery homepage |
| Cost | Free forever for the hosted product. No trial, credit card, or paid tier. | Smithery publishes plans on its pricing page.Smithery pricing |
03 / Pick the other one
When Smithery is the better choice
There is a clear set of jobs where the registry is the right tool.
- Your problem is connecting agents to third-party services, and you want OAuth, credentials, and retries handled for you.
- You want the same connected accounts reused across chats, workflows, and different harnesses.
- You are publishing an MCP server and want distribution plus usage observability.
- You want to browse a large public registry of MCP servers rather than a short curated list.
- The bottleneck is authentication plumbing, not knowing which skill your colleagues recommend.
04 / Pick the library
When a team library fits better
The library exists for a smaller, more human problem.
- Teammates keep asking which skill to use and where the one you recommended lives.
- Your team runs a mix of agents, so one runtime or one install path does not cover everyone.
- You want the list scoped to invited teammates rather than published publicly.
- You want the original source visible on every entry, so people can read a skill before using it.
- You want free forever and MIT licensed, with the option to self-host the same code.
05 / How to run it
Running both
These sit at different layers, so most teams that need both simply keep both.
- Keep Smithery for the service connections your agents depend on.
- Create a Skills Board team library and save the skills your team recommends, each from its original source.
- Tag them the way your team searches, and add the note explaining why the skill made the list.
- Invite teammates so everyone starts from the same recommendation.
- Connect a compatible agent to Skills Board over MCP so it can search the team list without leaving the agent.
06 / Questions
Frequently asked questions
- Can I use Skills Board and Smithery together?
- Yes. They solve different problems. Smithery focuses on connecting agents to services and on publishing to a public registry. Skills Board records the skills your own team recommends and makes them searchable for teammates and for a connected agent.
- Is Skills Board an MCP server?
- Skills Board exposes an authenticated MCP endpoint and is listed on the Official MCP Registry as io.github.TommyBez/skillsboard. A compatible agent authorizes through the browser, so there is no API key to copy.
- Does Skills Board host or run skills?
- No. It records the original repository and path, and offers the source link, an install command, or a ZIP of the latest files available at download time. It does not install or execute skills.
- What does Skills Board cost?
- The hosted product is free forever, with no trial, credit card, or paid tier. The code is MIT licensed and open source.
Sources
- Smithery homepage
Connecting agents to tools and services, the count of browsable MCPs, managed auth and credential injection, the CLI, and agent.pw as the open-source vault.
- Smithery skills catalog
The public, paginated skills catalog with categories, publisher namespaces, badges, and install counts.
- Smithery pricing
The published plans page.
Keep reading
Put your team's recommendations somewhere everyone can find them.
Free forever, MIT licensed, and open source. Create a library, save the first skill, and invite the people who keep asking.