scitoolkit

A package manager and runtime for scientific AI tools. Lets researchers publish toolkits to the SciToolkit registry and use them in coding agents (Claude Code, Codex) or in scripts via the Model Context Protocol.

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 scitoolkit

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

# Or scope an install to the current project's manifest
stk install -l arxiv-search

# See what you have
stk list

# Serve installed toolkits over MCP stdio
stk serve

stk is a shorter alias for scitoolkit; both ship with the package and behave identically.

Installs are global by default (-g). Use -l to pin a toolkit into the current project's .scitoolkit/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 stk install (no args) gets the same toolkits at the same versions.

To use the served toolkits in Claude Code, add this to its MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scitoolkit": {
      "command": "scitoolkit",
      "args": ["serve"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code will spawn its own scitoolkit serve subprocess and discover all installed toolkits' tools. To watch tool calls fire in real time, run stk logs in another terminal.

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Authoring a toolkit

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

stk 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. stk create is still available if you want to reserve a name without uploading code yet, but it's no longer required.

stk 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 (stk 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
stk install -e .                 # live symlink to this source dir
stk serve my-toolkit             # serve it; edit tools/, restart, 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 stk serve. If you change dependencies, re-run stk install -e . to rebuild the env.

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

For the full author guide — toolkit layout, tool conventions, skills, groups, expected_toolkits, configuration — see https://scitoolkit.org/docs/authoring and https://scitoolkit.org/docs/configuration.

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What's in scitoolkit 0.6.0

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), or -e <path> (editable, live symlink to a local source).
• serve — run installed toolkits as an MCP stdio server. Supports positional toolkit names, --group, --enable-tool, --disable-tool, --dry-run, --call-timeout.
• setup <toolkit> — run a toolkit's setup.py (--reset, --check).
• config <show|edit|path|set|unset|validate> — manage per-toolkit config files at ~/.scitoolkit/config/<toolkit>.yaml.
• logs — tail the serve log with Rich coloring.
• groups — manage named tool subsets that span toolkits.

Features:

• Editable installs. stk 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 .scitoolkit/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 ~/.scitoolkit/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. scitoolkit 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.
• Per-tool selection: enable or disable individual tools per serve session or persistently in ~/.scitoolkit/serve.yaml.
• 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 (scitoolkit.org) — discover and manage published toolkits.

Each installed toolkit runs in its own subprocess in its own Python environment. The scitoolkit 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/adroman/scitoolkit.

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License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Links

• Website: https://scitoolkit.org
• Backend API: https://api.scitoolkit.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/adroman/scitoolkit
• Issues: https://github.com/adroman/scitoolkit/issues