Setup with MCP and Skills

Two pieces make an AI coding agent good at Zero Runtime:

The MCP server. A live search over these docs, hosted at https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai. The agent looks up real API details mid-task instead of recalling them.
The Agent Skill. The procedure for building on Zero Runtime: scoping the agent, wiring auth, and picking a pipeline.

Install both. The skill knows what to build; the MCP server tells it the exact method name.

Install the MCP server

Pick your client. Most clients need a restart before a new server loads.

Run this from your project, or add --scope user to make it available everywhere:

claude mcp add --transport http zeroruntime https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai

Confirm it registered with claude mcp list.

Add the server to ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json for this one:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "url": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

Create .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace. Copilot picks it up once the file is saved.

{
  "servers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

Add the server to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.zeroruntime]
url = "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"

Add the server to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "serverUrl": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

Add the server to ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json for every project, or .agents/mcp_config.json for this one:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "serverUrl": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

A remote server must use serverUrl. The legacy url and httpUrl fields are not supported. Type /mcp in the prompt panel to manage servers from inside the CLI.

Open the MCP Servers panel, choose to edit the configuration, and add the server to cline_mcp_settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "type": "streamableHttp",
      "url": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

Add the server under context_servers in your Zed settings.json:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "zeroruntime": {
      "source": "custom",
      "url": "https://mcp.zeroruntime.ai"
    }
  }
}

Verify the connection

Ask your agent:

Search the Zero Runtime docs for how to generate an auth token, and tell me which page it came from.

A connected agent replies with a real docs.zeroruntime.ai URL it just fetched. If it answers from memory, cites no page, or says it has no such tool, the server has not loaded. Restart the client and recheck the file you edited.

Install the Agent Skill

One skill, zeroruntime, covering voice agents, telephony, and the auth each needs.

npx skills add ZeroRuntimeAI/skills

npx skills is agent-agnostic. It asks which agents to install into. Pick the ones you use, then restart them. To place it by hand instead, copy the zeroruntime folder into your agent’s skills directory, for example ~/.claude/skills/zeroruntime.

The skill covers voice agents today. For Physical AI the MCP server still searches the robotics pages, so the agent works from the real docs. It just has no pre-written procedure to follow, which makes a specific prompt matter more.

Sample prompts

Once the server is connected, describe what you want in plain language. The agent searches these docs as it works, so it uses the real class and method names instead of guessing them.

Build a voice agent

Using the Zero Runtime docs, build me a Python voice agent that answers our support line. Use Deepgram for speech to text, Gemini for the model, and Cartesia for the voice. Give it a tool that looks up an order by number, and have it hand off to a human when the caller asks for one. Show me how to run it locally first.

Add telephony to the agent I just built so it answers a real phone number. Walk me through what I need to set up on the provider side.

Build a physical AI teleoperation setup

Using the Zero Runtime docs, set up remote teleoperation for my hardware. The follower is an SO-101 arm on a Raspberry Pi with one USB camera, and I want to drive it from my laptop. Write both scripts, set safe joint limits, and record the session so I can export a LeRobot dataset later.

My robot is not an SO-101. Show me how to write a custom follower adapter for it, and which methods I have to implement.

Name the hardware, the providers and the language you want. The more specific the prompt, the less the agent has to assume.

Skill or MCP server

They do different jobs and work best together.

	Agent Skill	MCP Server
What it is	The procedure the agent follows	The lookup the agent calls
What it holds	How to scope the build, wire auth, pick plugins	The current docs, searchable
When it runs	At the start of a Zero Runtime task	Whenever the agent needs an API detail

Troubleshooting

The agent says the tools are unavailable

Restart the client. Several of them only initialise MCP servers at startup.

A search comes back empty

Search for the full name as it appears in the docs, for example a plugin’s provider name, rather than an abbreviation.

A result is wrong or out of date

Ask the agent to send feedback through the server, including the page and the query you used. That reaches the team maintaining the index.

Start with AI

Quickstart

Setup with MCP and Skills

Install the MCP server

Verify the connection

Install the Agent Skill

Sample prompts

Build a voice agent

Build a physical AI teleoperation setup

Skill or MCP server

Troubleshooting

​Install the MCP server

​Verify the connection

​Install the Agent Skill

​Sample prompts

​Build a voice agent

​Build a physical AI teleoperation setup

​Skill or MCP server

​Troubleshooting

Install the MCP server

Verify the connection

Install the Agent Skill

Sample prompts

Build a voice agent

Build a physical AI teleoperation setup

Skill or MCP server

Troubleshooting