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ThinkGeo AI Agent Skills

ThinkGeo Agent Skills teach AI coding assistants how to build, review, and debug applications with ThinkGeo. They work with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and other assistants that support the open Agent Skills format.

Each skill is a short set of instructions that the assistant loads when your request matches it. The skills cover:

  • Workflows: how to research the ThinkGeo docs, write code that compiles, review existing code, plan an architecture, and troubleshoot problems.
  • Platform knowledge: setup order, projections, styling, refreshing, licensing, and the common mistakes for WPF, WinForms, Blazor, .NET MAUI, WebAPI, ThinkGeo Cloud, and offline deployments.

The skills are free and open source (MIT license).

Repository: github.com/ThinkGeo/thinkgeo-agent-skills (mirrored from GitLab)

What Are Agent Skills?

An Agent Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file of instructions, plus optional reference files and starter projects. Your assistant reads each skill's short description up front and loads the full skill only when a task needs it, so installed skills cost almost nothing until they're used.

Agent Skills and the ThinkGeo MCP Server do different jobs, and work best together:

ThinkGeo MCP Server ThinkGeo Agent Skills
Provides Live access to the ThinkGeo documentation, API reference, HowDoI samples, forum, and blog Workflows, setup patterns, and known pitfalls
Answers "What does the API say?" "How should I use it, and what should I check?"
Example Looks up the members of ProjectionConverter Knows the data's projection must be converted to the map's, and in which direction
Example Finds the WPF sample for displaying a shapefile Knows that code copied from a sample needs using ThinkGeo.UI.Wpf;, which the sample hides

The skills tell the assistant to check API names against the MCP server instead of guessing, and they also work on their own when the server isn't connected.

How much difference they make

We tested 18 typical ThinkGeo tasks (new projects, code reviews, troubleshooting, and architecture questions) with the same AI model in three setups:

Setup Average score Generated projects that build
No MCP server, no skills 0.76 2 of 10
MCP server only 0.92 6 of 10
MCP server plus Agent Skills 0.99 10 of 10

The full method and results are in EVALUATION.md in the repository.

Installation

Install all the skills: several of them point to each other's reference files. Then make sure the ThinkGeo MCP Server is connected. The Claude Code and Codex plugins connect it for you.

Claude Code

Install the plugin, which includes all the skills and the ThinkGeo MCP Server. Run these commands inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add ThinkGeo/thinkgeo-agent-skills
/plugin install thinkgeo-developer@thinkgeo

To install from GitLab instead, use /plugin marketplace add https://gitlab.com/thinkgeo/public/thinkgeo-agent-skills.git.

Codex

Install the plugin, which includes all the skills and the ThinkGeo MCP Server:

codex plugin marketplace add ThinkGeo/thinkgeo-agent-skills
codex plugin add thinkgeo-developer@thinkgeo

Or run /plugins inside Codex and install ThinkGeo Developer from the ThinkGeo marketplace.

Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and other assistants

Use the skills command-line installer (requires Node.js):

npx skills add ThinkGeo/thinkgeo-agent-skills

It asks which assistants to install for and copies the skills into each one's skills folder. Useful options:

Option Effect
--list Lists the skills without installing
-g Installs for your user account instead of the current project
-s <name> Installs one skill

This installs the skills only. Connect the ThinkGeo MCP Server in your assistant as well.

Manual installation

Clone the repository and copy the folders under skills/ into your assistant's skills folder. For Claude Code, that's .claude/skills/ in your project, or ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects:

git clone https://github.com/ThinkGeo/thinkgeo-agent-skills.git

Then connect the ThinkGeo MCP Server.

Assistants that use AGENTS.md

Some assistants read an AGENTS.md file in your project but don't support skills. For those, copy AGENTS.md from the repository into your project root, or add its contents to your existing AGENTS.md.

It's a condensed version of the skills: the key rules, the API names that don't exist, short platform notes, and the list of skills. Connect the ThinkGeo MCP Server as well.

Without installing anything

If your assistant is connected to the ThinkGeo MCP Server, it can read the skills from there with the tg_list_skills and tg_get_skill tools. Installing them is still better: installed skills load automatically when a task matches.

Available Skills

Workflow skills

These apply to every ThinkGeo product. They tell the assistant how to find and verify information.

Skill Use it for
thinkgeo-docs-research Accurate answers about ThinkGeo APIs, packages, data formats, and behavior, with links to the source
thinkgeo-code-example Writing ThinkGeo code and small projects with every API and package checked; setting up licensing
thinkgeo-code-review Reviewing and modernizing existing ThinkGeo code, including names from older versions
thinkgeo-architecture Choosing products, where to draw maps, data access, offline strategy, and deployment
thinkgeo-troubleshoot Diagnosing problems from the evidence: blank maps, pink tiles, license messages, misplaced layers

Knowledge skills

These hold the patterns and pitfalls for each platform.

Skill Use it for
thinkgeo-desktop-maps WPF and WinForms: project setup, setup order, projections, styling, refreshing, licensing, starter projects
thinkgeo-desktop-interaction WPF and WinForms: click to identify, highlighting, spatial queries, drawing, editing, markers, popups
thinkgeo-offline-maps Air-gapped and disconnected deployments: local basemaps, tile caches, packaging
thinkgeo-blazor Blazor map pages: Blazor Server versus WebAssembly, the MapView component, overlays, clicks, editing
thinkgeo-maui .NET MAUI apps: differences from desktop, licensing on phones, shipping data files, taps, GPS
thinkgeo-web-api ASP.NET Core tile services with Leaflet or OpenLayers: tile endpoints, projections, hosting, Linux
thinkgeo-cloud-maps ThinkGeo Cloud on any platform: basemaps, geocoding, routing, elevation, keys, quotas

Using the Skills

After installation you don't need to do anything special. Ask your assistant for what you want, and it loads the matching skills. For example:

  • "Create a WPF app that shows our parcels shapefile (State Plane, EPSG:2276) over a ThinkGeo Cloud basemap."
  • "When I click a parcel, highlight it and show its owner and address."
  • "Review this ThinkGeo code and update it for the current version."
  • "Our map shows pink tiles. What's wrong?"
  • "This app must run on a laptop with no internet access. How do we show a basemap?"
  • "Add a ThinkGeo map page to our Blazor Web App."

You can also name a skill directly, such as "Use the thinkgeo-code-review skill on MainWindow.xaml.cs".

What to expect

  • Current packages. New projects use the latest stable ThinkGeo packages from NuGet, all on one version. Existing projects keep their version unless you ask to upgrade.
  • Checked API names. The assistant confirms classes and members with the MCP server and tells you whether the code was compiled, checked against the documentation, or is only illustrative.
  • Placeholder keys. ThinkGeo Cloud keys appear as YOUR_CLIENT_ID and YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET. Use your own keys from the ThinkGeo Cloud console.
  • Licensing. The skills explain how ThinkGeo licensing works, including development and runtime licenses from Product Center. Your project still needs a valid license.

Review generated code

The skills make AI output much more reliable, but they don't replace your review. Check generated code for correctness, architecture fit, and security before using it in production.

Repository Structure

thinkgeo-agent-skills/
  skills/                 one folder per skill
    thinkgeo-desktop-maps/
      SKILL.md            instructions the assistant loads
      references/         detail it reads only when needed
      assets/             WPF and WinForms starter projects
    ...
  AGENTS.md               condensed version for AGENTS.md-based assistants
  .claude-plugin/         Claude Code plugin and marketplace
  .agents/plugins/        Codex marketplace
  plugin.json, mcp.json   portable plugin manifest and MCP server settings
  evals/                  automated evaluation cases
  EVALUATION.md           evaluation method and results
  CHANGELOG.md            release notes

Releases are tagged with their version number, for example 0.6.0. See the changelog for what changed in each release.

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