ames-preferred-mcps

ames-claude

Oliver's personal Claude Code plugins, skills, and marketplace — all in one repo. This is the source of truth for the portable Claude setup: plugins feed Claude Code directly via the ames-claude marketplace.

Structure

plugins/<name>/                              Plugins (each has .claude-plugin/plugin.json)
plugins/ames-standalone-skills/skills/       Standalone skills (edit here directly, no build step)
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json              Marketplace manifest (auto-generated by sync)

Skills are developed directly inside plugins/ames-standalone-skills/skills/. There is no top-level skills/ directory — the plugin IS the delivery mechanism.

Workflow

sync-skills    # In PATH via ~/Developer/scripts/

Two phases:

Phase 1 — Publish (local repo → GitHub):

1. Version bump — detects content changes in plugins, auto-bumps patch versions in plugin.json
2. Regenerate marketplace — builds .claude-plugin/marketplace.json from all active plugin manifests
3. Git commit and push — commits changed plugin.json and marketplace.json, pushes to GitHub

Phase 2 — Install (GitHub → local Claude, via official claude plugin CLI): 4. Register marketplace — adds github.com/oliverames/ames-claude as a claude plugin marketplace source 5. Update marketplace — runs claude plugin marketplace update ames-claude 6. Install / update plugins — runs claude plugin update or claude plugin install for each plugin 7. Remove stale plugins — uninstalls any @ames-claude plugins no longer in the marketplace

Naming

• ames-claude — the repo name and marketplace namespace (used in @ames-claude registry keys and cache paths)
• ames-standalone-skills — the plugin that bundles standalone skills

Plugins

Plugin	Description
ames-ynab	YNAB (You Need A Budget) MCP connector built and maintained by Oliver, with a local source snapshot refreshed into sources/
ames-preferred-mcps	Curated third-party MCP servers (apple-docs, apple-notifier, drafts, excel, google-workspace, macos-automator, pandoc, peekaboo, shortcuts, XcodeBuildMCP)
ames-standalone-skills	Bundle of standalone skills covering writing, dev, iOS, finance, automation, and AI

Adding a New Skill

1. Create a folder in plugins/ames-standalone-skills/skills/<skill-name>/
2. Add a SKILL.md with frontmatter (name, description, version)
3. Add any supporting files (references, scripts) in subdirectories
4. Run sync-skills to install locally, commit, and push

Adding a New Plugin

1. Create plugins/<plugin-name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json with name, description, author, version, keywords
2. Add commands in commands/<name>.md with frontmatter
3. Add skills in skills/<name>/SKILL.md if needed
4. Run sync-skills to install, register, and push

Related repos

Repo	Role
oliverames/dotfiles	Config, manifest, hooks, install script
oliverames/scripts	CLI tools including sync-skills and check-connector-updates
oliverames/claude-code-backup	Mirror of ~/.claude/ with secrets redacted