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Install the Skills Pack

The Skills Pack adds ready-made blueprint and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) skills to your AI agents. Where the MCP server gives an agent the ability to act on Stack Automation, the Skills Pack gives it the know-how: reusable instructions and patterns for authoring blueprints, writing Terraform/IaC, and following your organization's conventions — so the agent produces higher-quality, on-standard results with less prompting.

Note: Skills are packaged instructions that ride alongside the MCP server. Install the Skills Pack in addition to connecting a tool via one of the other integrations — the MCP connection lets the agent act; the Skills Pack teaches it how to do so well.

Prerequisites​

Install​

  1. Open the Skills Pack panel in Admin → Agents → AI Integrations and click Setup.
  2. Follow the steps shown in the panel to add the Skills Pack to your agent. The exact steps depend on the client:
    • Claude Cowork: the Stack Automation plugin already bundles the skills, so they are available once the plugin is added. See Connect Claude Cowork.
    • Codex / VS Code / other MCP clients: add the Skills Pack alongside the stack-automation MCP server as directed in the panel.
  3. Start a new session in your agent so the new skills are loaded.

When you're done, tick "I've completed the setup — mark as connected" in the panel.

What you get​

  • Blueprint authoring skills — guidance for structuring single- and multi-asset blueprints, inputs, outputs, and dependencies.
  • IaC skills — patterns for writing and wiring Terraform and other IaC so it deploys cleanly as a Stack Automation blueprint.
  • Convention-aware output — the agent follows the naming, tagging, and structure conventions the pack encodes, reducing review cycles.

Operate​

With the Skills Pack installed, ask your agent to create or improve infrastructure, and it will apply the packaged expertise automatically:

  • "Author a Stack Automation blueprint for a three-tier web app with a managed database."
  • "Turn the Terraform in this repo into a Stack Automation blueprint following our conventions."
  • "Review this blueprint and suggest improvements for reusability."
  • "Scaffold an IaC module for an EKS cluster and deploy it as a blueprint."

Client setup examples​

Use these examples to add the stack-automation MCP server in common clients.

Claude Code (CLI)​

Run:

claude mcp add --transport http stack-automation https://stackautomation.cisco.com/mcp \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your-token>"

Then start a new Claude session so the updated MCP configuration and skills are loaded.

VS Code​

If your VS Code MCP client supports adding servers from the Command Palette:

  1. Open Command Palette.
  2. Run MCP: Add Server (or the equivalent command in your MCP extension).
  3. Choose HTTP transport.
  4. Set server name to stack-automation.
  5. Set URL to https://stackautomation.cisco.com/mcp.
  6. Add header Authorization: Bearer <your-token>.
  7. Restart the agent/chat session in VS Code.

If your MCP client uses a JSON config file, add an entry equivalent to:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stack-automation": {
      "transport": "http",
      "url": "https://stackautomation.cisco.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <your-token>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting​

  • Skills don't seem to apply. Start a fresh agent session after installing, and confirm the pack shows as connected in the panel.
  • Agent can author but can't deploy. Authoring comes from the Skills Pack; deploying requires an active MCP connection — verify your MCP integration is connected.