Setup library

The setup library is a collection of agent setups shared between Athenode projects. A project publishes one of its setups, and any other project can take it: as a new setup of its own, or merged into a setup it already has.

Open it from Library in the sidebar, or from Browse library on a project's setups page.

What an entry is

A library entry is a copy of a setup taken at the moment it was published. It holds the whole setup: its agents, its skills with their files, its AGENTS.md rules, its MCP servers and all its files, including the settings/ files.

• The entry is independent of the setup it came from. Editing or deleting that setup changes nothing in the library until you publish a new version.
• Skills imported from a skill source and MCP servers added from the MCP catalog are stored as plain content. In a copy made from the library they are ordinary items of your setup, with no link to where they first came from.
• An entry has two levels of visibility. Every signed-in Athenode user sees every entry in the app, with its full content; there are no private or link-only entries. The open web sees an entry only when its publisher turned public display on, and then only its details; see Public display.

Publishing a setup

Publishing needs editor or owner access on the project, and the project must be on a paid plan. On the Free plan you can still browse the library, add entries and merge them.

On the project's setups page, open the setup's menu and choose Publish to library. The review page shows everything that will be published.

Before you publish:

1. Check the name and description. They start from the setup's own, and you can change them. An entry's name is unique across the whole library.
2. Add up to 10 tags, used for search and filtering. A tag is lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, up to 30 characters.
3. Read through what will be published, then confirm that you have reviewed it and are responsible for everything it makes visible to others.
4. Decide whether to tick Also show this entry on the public Athenode website. It stays off unless you tick it; see Public display.

Athenode refuses to publish a setup while one of its MCP servers holds a literal value in an environment variable or a header. Replace each value with a ${VAR} placeholder and publish again; see Secrets. Nothing else is checked for you: command arguments, URLs, rules, files and the texts of skills and agents are yours to review.

The entry is live as soon as you publish it, and the setup shows a Published badge with its version.

Editing and unpublishing

Editors and owners of the project can change an entry's name, description and tags and turn its public display on or off with Edit library entry, and remove it with Unpublish, on any plan. Editing does not create a new version.

Unpublishing deletes the entry. Setups already added to other projects keep working and stop receiving updates.

If the project moves to the Free plan, its entries stay in the library; only publishing new entries and new versions stops. If the setup or the project is deleted, the entry stays too. It can no longer get new versions, and the person who published it can still unpublish it.

Public display

A published entry can also be shown on the public Athenode website, at athenode.com/library, where anyone can see it without an account and search engines can index it. Public display is off for every entry until its publisher turns it on.

The public page of an entry shows:

• its name, description and tags;
• its current version and the version log with the version notes;
• the names of its agents, skills and MCP servers, the descriptions of its agents and skills, and how many items of each kind it holds;
• the publisher's display name, never the email address.

It never shows the texts of agents and skills, skill files, the rules text, files (including settings/) or MCP server configuration. The full content stays available to signed-in users only.

What to know:

• Which entries get a page. The public site shows the 50 most liked entries among those with public display on. Turning it on does not guarantee a page, and an entry overtaken in likes loses its page.
• Changes take about a day. The public site is rebuilt once a day. Turning public display on or off, editing the entry, publishing a new version and unpublishing all reach it within about a day. Search engines may keep copies for longer.
• Where to turn it on and off. Tick or untick Also show this entry on the public Athenode website on the publish page or in Edit library entry. This needs editor or owner access on the project and works on any plan. From the CLI use --public-display and --no-public-display on library publish and library edit; the MCP tools take publicDisplay.
• It belongs to the entry. Publishing a new version keeps the setting. The entry's page in the app shows whether public display is on.
• An administrator can make it unavailable. An Athenode administrator can make public display unavailable for an entry. The entry stays in the in-app library; you can still turn public display off, but not on.
• Account deletion. When the publisher's account is deleted, the entry leaves the public site.

Versions

One setup has one library entry. Publishing it again with Publish new version creates the next version of the same entry: 1, 2, 3 and so on. You can add a note saying what changed.

The library keeps the content of the latest version only, and that is the version everyone views, adds and merges. The version log on the entry page lists every version with its date and note.

Browsing the library

Anyone signed in can browse the library, on any plan and with any role.

• Search by name, description or tag.
• Filter by a tag.
• Sort by Recently updated, Most added or Most liked.

An entry page shows who published it, its version log and its full content, read-only: the agents, skills, MCP servers and files, and the rules text. Open any of them to read it before you use the entry.

You can like an entry, once, and take your like back. The number of likes and the number of projects that added the entry are shown on its card.

Adding an entry as a new setup

Choose Use in project on an entry, then Add as a new setup. This needs editor or owner access on the project you add it to.

• You get a new setup with a full copy of the entry, including its settings/ files exactly as published.
• The dialog suggests the entry's name. If your project already has a setup with that name, Athenode offers a free one.
• Your project's active setup does not change. To use the new setup, install it with athenode init --setup <id or slug>; see Switching which setup is active.
• The new setup counts towards your plan's limits, both the number of setups per project and the agents, skills and MCP servers per setup. If it does not fit, nothing is created.

The published settings/ files describe the publisher's project. Run /atn-settings after installing the setup to make them yours.

Merging an entry into a setup you have

Choose Use in project, then Merge into an existing setup, and pick the setup. Any setup of the project can be the target, including its own copy of the Athenode setup. Merging needs editor or owner access and is available on every plan.

A merge always starts with a preview. For skills, agents, MCP servers and files it lists:

• New items, which your setup does not have. All are selected; deselect the ones you do not want.
• Conflicts, where your setup has an item with the same name, or a file at the same path. For each one choose Keep mine, the default, or Replace with the library one. Some conflicts can only be kept: they are marked Cannot be replaced, with the reason. Use Compare to see the difference first.
• Identical items, which are already the same in your setup. Nothing is written for them.

A setup has one rules text, so the rules are a single choice: Keep mine, the default; Append the library rules, which adds them after yours under a heading with the entry's name; or Replace with the library rules.

What to know before you apply:

• Replacing anything asks for a confirmation first. A merge cannot be undone, and no backup is made.
• Nothing is ever deleted from your setup by a merge.
• A merge is all or nothing. If it would exceed a limit of your plan, or any part of it fails, your setup is left unchanged. Only new agents, skills and MCP servers count towards the limits; a replacement does not.
• Replacing a skill or an agent changes only the setup you merge into. Other setups of the project that use the same skill or agent keep their own version.
• If the setup or the entry changes while you are looking at the preview, the preview is loaded again and you check your choices once more.
• Items you replace in your project's own copy of the Athenode setup count as customised and no longer follow changes to the default setup.

A merge is a one-off. The setup does not remember the entry and is not told about its later versions.

Updates

A setup that was added as a new setup from the library remembers the entry and the version it came from. When the entry gets a newer version, the setup shows Update available with the notes of the new versions.

• Update runs the same preview as a merge, with the latest version as the source: new items are added, matching items get the keep-or-replace choice, and nothing is deleted. Afterwards the setup is on the new version.
• Skip this version hides the notice until the entry gets another version.

If the entry is unpublished, the setup keeps working as an ordinary setup and shows no update information.

Using the library from your AI agent

Your AI agent works with the library through the library_* tools of the Athenode MCP server, and the /atn-manage skill uses them for you: it can browse the library, add and merge entries, update a setup and publish one, and it asks you before it publishes or replaces anything, and before it turns public display on. The same operations are available as the library commands of the CLI. Likes and Skip this version are available in the web app only.

What's next

• Agent Setups — create, customise and switch between agent setups
• MCP servers — placeholders for secrets, which publishing requires
• Setup files — the files published with a setup, including settings/
• Athenode MCP server — the library_* tools
• Built-in skills — what /atn-manage can do with the library
• Public setup library — the entries shown on the public website