Custom agent setup

For agent setup, perform the following steps:

1. Run tessl init from your project root first. Auto-detected agents (Cursor, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Codex) need no further configuration. You can skip the rest of these steps and start your agent to validate it's configured.
2. MCP configuration
3. Setup rules
4. Accept running Tessl

Configuring your agent

MCP setup

This will allow your agent to access context from installed plugins through the Tessl exposed tools.

Typically most agents have a settings file for MCP, often .mcp.json or support for that file. Refer to your agents documentation for the specific formats and files involved for your agent. The values are the following: Name: "tessl" Command: "tessl"

Args: "mcp", start"

Type, if asked: "stdio"

Examples

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tessl": {
      "command": "tessl",
      "args": [
        "mcp",
        "start"
      ]
    }
  }
}

[mcp_servers.tessl]
type = "stdio"
command = "tessl"
args = ["mcp", "start"]

Rules setup

Rules setup will load the configuration to help your agent use the Tessl MCP effectively plus any other rules from the plugins you installed.

Determine what file you can indicate to the agent to use Tessl and provide steering rules. If there is capability to use AGENTS.md, use or create an AGENTS.md file with the following content:

# Agent Rules

@.tessl/RULES.md

Enable Tessl

Most agents will prompt on startup to allow the MCP tool to be used, however some may require you to take an extra step and go into the agent's settings to enable it:

Validating configuration

Review the agent mcp configuration, often "/mcp" in terminal based agents, and determine if Tessl is enabled/review tools are available. /mcp

Prompt your agent: Use tessl to search for code review skills

You will see calls to tessl query_library_docs, and/or tessl search , and results if configured properly.

Sample configurations for agents not auto-detected

OpenCode