For coding agents

Agents install taste. They don’t invent it.

Design once. Agents build in your taste. shads.app is a visual theme builder for shadcn/ui — human taste in the studio, installable themes for MCP and the CLI.

1. Connect MCP

~/.cursor/mcp.json (all projects) or .cursor/mcp.json (this repo)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shads": {
      "url": "https://mcp.shads.app"
    }
  }
}

Use the project file for team-shared config and keep the key in an environment variable.

No API key is needed to browse the catalog or install Free-tagged themes. A single account API key enables library installs and reading your saved themes; Pro adds save, update, and generate tools. See the MCP setup guides and authentication. Verify the connection by calling connection_status.

2. Install the base skill

npx shadcn@latest add https://shads.app/r/skill.json

Theme installs also pull a theme-specific skill. For a saved theme, the keyless registry URL (https://shads.app/r/u-<token>.json) is a secret install credential; do not share it publicly.

3. Pull a theme

Three unmodified catalog themes install without an account:

npx shadcn@latest add https://shads.app/r/system-modern-default-theme.json
shads install system-modern-default-theme

For any other theme, sign in, save it to your library, then use the command from Get theme. The first install activates the saved theme; Free includes three lifetime activations, and an activated theme installs any number of times. Deleting it does not refund the activation.

• Design-system theme catalog: https://shads.app/themes
• Saved themes: open My themes from the builder menu, then Get theme
• Docs for MCP tools: https://shads.app/docs/mcp

FAQ