Agent setup overview

Learn how to set up most agents, including custom agents, quickly. For even more specific setup guidance, check out our agent setup guides for your specific agent.

Quick setup

Equip your agent with the latest Netlify context, including agent skills:

fetch https://netlify.ai to help me deploy and build with Netlify using the latest agent skills

• Agent skills repo
• netlify.ai context site

MCP servers, plugins, and more

Netlify offers an MCP Server, which you can connect to through a connector, plugin, or your agent.

Learn more about Netlify’s MCP server.

For specific guidance on connecting to the Netlify’s remote MCP Server, check your agent setup guide or MCP Server directory or marketplace.

For example, you can find Netlify in Cursor’s marketplace or in Claude’s Connector Directory.

Quick setup for Code Editors

Some code editors support a quick MCP Server connection that you can click to get started. Learn more in your code editor docs or MCP Server directory.

Connect to MCP Server with .json file

To connect to the Netlify MCP server with a .json file, we recommend you check with your AI tool, IDE, or agent to learn specific configuration requirements.

In general, we recommend Netlify’s remote MCP server setup over using Netlify’s local MCP server. Most often people only use the local MCP server when their local environment restricts remote MCP servers.

Here is a general example of a .json MCP Server configuration file used to connect to Netlify’s remote MCP Server at https://netlify-mcp.netlify.app/mcp:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "netlify": {
      "url": "https://netlify-mcp.netlify.app/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Note: Your AI tool, IDE, or agent setup may require some changes from the above example, such as saving the file as mcp.json, settings.json, changing mcpServers to ContextServers and/or requiring another field such "type":"http". Check your agent setup guide or MCP Server setup docs or marketplace for the most accurate setup instructions.

Agent skills

To help your agent build with best practices, check out our agent skills for building and deploying on Netlify.

You can share a skill directly with your agent or have all skills installed in your local project files or repository. Some agents also support invoking a specific skill by name in a command, such as Claude Code with /<skill-name>.

To install agent skills for Netlify with any agent directly in your terminal or agent chat:

npx skills add netlify/context-and-tools --skill '*' --yes

Learn more about agent skills for building and deploying on Netlify in our official agent skills repository.

Agent skills highlights

Here are some highlights of agent skills for building and deploying on Netlify. Note that if you are using Agent Runners, you don’t need to invoke agent skills as they are applied automatically for you.

Skill	Feature Support	Description
netlify-functions	Netlify Functions	Modern syntax, routing, Background Functions, Scheduled Functions, and streaming
netlify-edge-functions	Edge Functions	Deno runtime, middleware patterns, geolocation, and request manipulation
netlify-blobs	Netlify Blobs	Key-value and binary object storage with zero configuration
netlify-db	Netlify Database	Managed Postgres, Drizzle ORM integration, and migrations
netlify-image-cdn	Image CDN	On-the-fly image transformation and optimization
netlify-forms	Netlify Forms	HTML form handling, AJAX submissions, and spam filtering
netlify-config	File-based configuration	netlify.toml configuration — redirects, headers, build settings, and deploy contexts
netlify-cli-and-deploy	Netlify CLI	Commands, Git and manual deploys, and environment variables
netlify-deploy	Create deploys	Authentication, site linking, Deploy Previews, and production deploys
netlify-frameworks	Framework adapters	Vite, Astro, TanStack Start, and Next.js on Netlify
netlify-caching	Caching	CDN cache control, cache tags, purge, and stale-while-revalidate
netlify-ai-gateway	AI Gateway	Proxy for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google AI SDKs