Claude Code

mantis setup claude copies the CLI’s bundled skills into Claude Code’s skills directory. They become slash commands that teach Claude to call mantis use <tool> in Bash. No marketplace plugin and no MCP server entry are involved.

Install skills

mantis setup claude

Skills are written to:

~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

Claude Code discovers them automatically, and each folder becomes a slash command. The command prints the five names it installed.

Slash commands

Command	What it covers	Model can invoke it
/mantis	The hub skill: mantis:// URIs, the read-reason-mutate tool tiers, argument passing, bag building, bulk export.	Yes
/mantis-select	Switching the active space or thread by UUID, without opening the blocking interactive picker.	Yes
/mantis-extensions	Building, modifying, validating, packaging, and installing Mantis extensions and vertical panels.	Yes
/mantis-createmap	mantis create map from a local CSV, including how to type each column.	No, explicit only
/mantis-codebase	mantis create codebase to index a repo into a searchable map.	No, explicit only

/mantis-createmap and /mantis-codebase declare disable-model-invocation, so Claude will not reach for them on its own. When Claude is driving the flow itself it runs the underlying mantis create map / mantis create codebase commands directly.

Skills teach Claude to run mantis in Bash. MCP tools are reached through mantis use <tool>, not through a native editor MCP connection.

Typical flow

1. Install and configure the CLI. npm install -g mantisai-cli, then mantis setup for API key, space, and thread. See Install.
2. Sync the skills. mantis setup claude.
3. Start in Claude Code. Type /mantis, or just ask about your Mantis space and let the skill load from its description.
4. Let it orient itself. Claude runs mantis use get_space_context first, then works from the map URIs that call returns.

Example prompts:

What space am I in?
Summarize the active map.
What clusters look most important here?
Bag every markdown file in this map.

Refresh after CLI updates

Skills are copied into ~/.claude/skills/, not linked, so upgrading the package alone does not update them:

npm install -g mantisai-cli@latest
mantis setup claude

Troubleshooting

Slash commands missing. Run mantis setup claude and confirm ~/.claude/skills/mantis/SKILL.md exists. If the skills directory did not exist when Claude Code started, restarting it once is worth trying.

Claude does not use Mantis. Check that mantis status works in a terminal first. If it does, invoke /mantis explicitly rather than hoping the description matches.

No thread configured. The CLI has no active thread. Run mantis select thread in a terminal, then have Claude call mantis use get_space_context again.

Stale context after a thread change. Nothing needs reloading on the Claude side. The CLI reads ~/.mantis/config.json on every invocation, so the next mantis use already carries the new thread. Claude just needs to re-run get_space_context to refresh what it knows.

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