Create and organise setups

An agent setup is a named bundle of what your AI coding tools work with: skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and setup files. A project's setups are on the Setups page of the web app, where you create, clone, rename, describe and delete them.

Field	Rules
Name	Required, up to 200 characters, unique among the setups of the project.
Description	Optional, up to 25,000 characters.

You need the owner or editor role to create or change a setup. A viewer opens the same page and reads every setup. The project's plan sets how many setups the project holds: 1 on the Free plan, 5 on Solo and 10 on Team, with no limit on Business. Plans and limits has every limit.

Open a setup and its parts

The Setups page shows each setup as a card, the blueprint of the setup you select and an inspector for the part you open.

1. In the project's sidebar, open Setups.
2. Optional: enter part of a name in Search setups... to narrow the cards.
3. Select a setup card. Each card shows the setup's name and how many skills, agents and MCP servers it has.
4. On the blueprint below the cards, select the part you want to see: the setup itself at the centre, or its rules, files, a skill, an agent or an MCP server.

The part opens in the inspector, a panel beside the blueprint titled Setup, Rules, Setup files, Skill, Agent or MCP server. You read and edit the part there, and close the inspector to return to the blueprint.

The blueprint also carries the state of a setup's parts. An imported skill shows Update available, Edited locally or Removed upstream, and an MCP server that a skill needs and the setup lacks appears as Missing with the names of the skills that need it. A setup published to the setup library shows a badge such as Published v2, and selecting the badge opens the library entry.

The menu of the setup at the centre of the blueprint holds the actions on the setup as a whole: Pull from…, which copies parts of another setup into this one, Delete setup, and the library actions Publish to library, Publish new version, Edit library entry and Unpublish, which Publish a setup describes. A setup that you added from the library shows Update available when its entry has a newer version, with Update, Skip this version and Show what changed. Browse library at the top of the page opens the setup library for this project.

Each part has its own page: skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and setup files.

Create a setup

Create a setup when a job needs skills, agents or rules that your existing setups should not carry, such as a security review next to the specification workflow. You need the owner or editor role, and the project must have room for another setup, which means the Solo, Team or Business plan.

1. On the Setups page, select New setup.
2. In the Create agent setup dialog, enter the Setup name.
3. Under Start from, keep Blank setup.
4. Select Create setup.

The page selects the setup and shows its empty blueprint. Add its parts from the blueprint, or pull them from another setup. To start from a published setup, follow Browse the setup library in the dialog.

A setup you create is not installed anywhere. To work with it in a local project directory, install it with npx @athenode/cli init --setup <id-or-slug>.

When the project already holds as many setups as its plan allows, the web app shows Plan limit reached with the current usage. The owner can upgrade from that dialog, and other members ask the owner to upgrade.

Clone a setup

Clone a setup when you want a variant of one you have while the original stays as it is. The prerequisites are those of creating a setup.

1. On the Setups page, select New setup.
2. Enter the Setup name of the clone.
3. Under Start from, choose the setup to copy. Your project's copy of the standard setup is listed first.
4. Select Create setup.

The clone is a full copy: the skills and agents as copies of their own, the rules, the MCP servers with their values and the setup files, including the settings files under settings/. Changing the clone does not change the setup it came from, and the other way round.

A clone counts as one setup against the plan's limit, and its skills, agents and MCP servers count against the limits per setup. A clone of your project's copy of the standard setup is a separate setup, so the updates that Athenode makes to the copy do not reach it. To take later changes from the original, pull them into the clone.

Rename or describe a setup

A description tells the other members what a setup is for, and the start of it is shown on the blueprint.

1. On the Setups page, select the setup's card.
2. On the blueprint, select the setup at the centre. It opens in the inspector under the title Setup.
3. To rename the setup, select its name, enter the new one and save it.
4. To describe the setup, enter the text in the field Add a description… and save it.

The inspector also shows when the setup was last updated. If another setup of the project has the name you enter, the web app answers "Another setup in this project already has this name."

Delete a setup

Delete a setup once no member works with it and it is not installed in any directory you use. You need the owner or editor role. Your project's copy of the standard setup cannot be deleted.

1. On the Setups page, select the setup's card.
2. On the blueprint, open the menu of the setup at the centre and select Delete setup.
3. In the Delete agent setup? dialog, select Delete.

The setup's rules, MCP servers and setup files go with it. A skill or agent that another setup of the project also uses stays in that setup.

A directory in which the deleted setup was installed keeps its files until init runs there again. That run asks which setup to install, or installs your project's copy of the standard setup when that is the only setup left. Its plan lists the deleted setup's files under "Removed".

Create and organise setups from your AI tool or the terminal

From your AI tool, ask /atn-manage to list, create, clone, rename or delete a setup. It asks you to confirm a deletion first.

From the terminal, use the athenode setups commands of the Athenode CLI. setups list prints every setup of the project with its id and marks the installed one. setups create makes an empty setup, setups clone copies one, setups update changes the name or the description and setups delete removes one.

npx @athenode/cli setups clone "Athenode" --name "Security review"