As AI agents take on more of the work of building and operating on-chain, the question shifts from what can a model say to what can a model do. While an agent can reason brilliantly about Hedera for a number of tasks, if it can also reach the network for accurate, up-to-date information for both direct interaction and querying, its capabilities are highly enhanced.
Two emerging standards make that possible: the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which gives agents a universal way to connect to tools and data, and Agent Skills, which give agents the packaged expertise to use those tools well.
Hedera developers can use both. The newly-launched Hedera Hosted MCP Server lets any MCP-compatible client tap into Hedera network capabilities without standing up local infrastructure, and the open-source Hedera Skills marketplace gives AI coding agents the domain knowledge to build on Hedera correctly. Together they turn a general-purpose AI assistant into a capable Hedera developer.
Two ways to expand agent capabilities
It helps to separate the two ideas because they solve different problems.
MCP is about structure. It is an open standard – originally introduced by Anthropic and now stewarded by the Linux Foundation – that standardizes how an AI application connects to external tools, data, and services. Instead of writing a one-off integration for every model and every framework, a developer exposes capabilities (tools) once through an MCP server, and any MCP-compatible client – Claude Desktop, Cursor, or a custom application – can discover and call them. MCP has quickly become the de facto way agents reach the outside world.
Agent Skills are about configurability. A Skill is a modular knowledge package: a folder containing instructions, references, and optional code that teaches an agent how to perform a specialized task reliably. Where MCP hands an agent a set of tools, Skills hand it the playbook for using them. Crucially, Skills load through “progressive disclosure” – the agent pulls in only the instructions relevant to the task at hand, rather than carrying every reference in its context at once.
Put simply: MCP gives an agent hands, and Skills give it knowledge and configurable capabilities. Hedera offers both.
The Hedera Hosted MCP Server
The Hedera Hosted MCP Server is a managed, remote instance of the Hedera Agent Kit, exposing its tools over MCP. That “hosted” part matters: developers get Hedera network capabilities without deploying or maintaining any agent infrastructure themselves. You point your client at an endpoint, supply an account ID, and the Hedera tools appear in your assistant’s tool list.
Connecting is deliberately lightweight. The server uses the MCP Streamable HTTP transport at https://agentic-testnet-mcp.hedera.com/mcp, and you initialize a session by passing your Hedera Testnet account ID in a single HTTP header, x-hedera-account-id. On that first request, the server looks up your account’s public key on the Hedera Mirror Node and scopes the session to your account, so every subsequent tool call knows which account it is building transactions for.
For most clients, configuration is a small JSON block:
{
"mcpServers": {
"hedera": {
"url": "https://agentic-testnet-mcp.hedera.com/mcp",
"headers": {
"x-hedera-account-id": "0.0.YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID"
}
}
}
}Drop that into Cursor’s mcp.json or Claude Desktop’s config, restart the client, and the tools are ready. Standard MCP clients also handle session continuity for you – the protocol’s SDK captures the server’s mcp-session-id and silently attaches it to later requests, so there is no need to manage session tokens by hand.
Sign on your side, always
The most important design choice in the hosted server is what it deliberately does not do. It operates exclusively in RETURN_BYTES mode: it never signs or submits transactions, and it never sees a private key. You only ever send your account ID.
When you ask the agent to do something that changes on-chain state – transfer HBAR, mint a token, deploy a contract – the server builds the transaction and returns it as hex-encoded bytes. Signing and submitting happen entirely on your side, using a local script or the Hedera SDK. This keeps custody where it belongs and removes the most dangerous failure mode of giving an AI agent network access: it can propose, but it cannot spend, until you sign.
Example: Sign and submit transactions
Set up an operator account and a Hedera client, then decode, sign, and submit the bytes returned by a transaction-building tool:
const bytesObject = parsed.bytes || parsed.raw.bytes;
const realBytes = Buffer.isBuffer(bytesObject)
? bytesObject
: Buffer.from(bytesObject.data || bytesObject);
console.log('Transaction bytes found. Executing...');
const tx = Transaction.fromBytes(realBytes);
const result = await tx.execute(humanInTheLoopClient);
const receipt = await result.getReceipt(humanInTheLoopClient);
console.log('Transaction receipt:', receipt.status.toString());
console.log('Transaction ID:', result.transactionId.toString());
bytesHandled = true;There is a practical consideration worth flagging. General-purpose clients like Cursor and Claude Desktop can run any read-only query out of the box – checking balances, looking up token details, fetching exchange rates – because no signature is required. But if you ask them to perform a state-changing action, they will hand back the unsigned transaction bytes, and you will need to sign and submit them yourself with a local tool. The hosted server is, in effect, read-and-build for GUI clients, and full read-write for applications wired to do the signing.
What the tools cover
The hosted server comes pre-configured with tools, grouped according to Hedera’s core plugins in a few familiar categories: Accounts (create accounts, update keys, transfer HBAR, manage allowances, query balances), Tokens (HTS) (create, mint, transfer, associate, and query fungible and non-fungible tokens), Smart Contracts (EVM) (deploy, call, and query ERC-20 and ERC-721 contracts), Consensus (HCS) (create topics, submit messages, query topic info), and a Transactions and Misc group for records, exchange rates, and node fees.
A few limitations are by design. The hosted instance connects to Testnet only – Mainnet integrations call for the self-hosted MCP server. No transaction execution happens server-side. And sessions live in memory, so if the server restarts, active clients simply re-initialize.
Hedera Agent Skills
If MCP is how an agent reaches Hedera, the Hedera Skills repository is how it learns to build on Hedera well. It is an open-source (Apache-2.0) marketplace of plugins and skills for AI coding agents, combining Hedera-specific development tools with general-purpose dev-workflow intelligence. Each plugin is a packaged bundle of instructions, references, and working examples that extend what an agent can do.
Installation fits naturally into the tools developers already use. You add the skills with a simple command:
npx skills@latest add hedera-dev/hedera-skillsOr, for Claude Code users, you can install the marketplace.
# Add the Hedera marketplace
/plugin marketplace add hedera-dev/hedera-skills
# Install individual plugins
/plugin install agent-kit-plugin
/plugin install system-contracts
/plugin install native-services-js
/plugin install hackathon-helper
/plugin install dev-intelligenceOnce installed, skills are available automatically – the agent reaches for them when it detects a relevant task, loading only the reference files it needs.
The current lineup maps cleanly onto how people actually build:
- agent-kit-plugin – a guide for creating custom plugins that extend the Hedera Agent Kit, covering plugin architecture, tool interface specs, Zod schema patterns for Hedera types, prompt-writing patterns, and error handling, with working examples.
- system-contracts – technical references for Hedera’s precompiled system contracts, including the Hedera Token Service contract (0x167) and the Schedule Service contract (0x16b), for developers writing Solidity that touches native Hedera services.
- native-services-js – guides for using Hedera native services with the Hiero JavaScript SDK, spanning token-service operations (creation, minting, KYC/freeze/wipe, airdrops, custom fees) and consensus-service patterns (topic creation, chunked messages, mirror-node subscriptions).
- hackathon-helper – two skills aligned to official judging criteria: an interactive PRD generator that produces a project plan with a predicted score, and a submission validator that scans a repo and grades it against all seven criteria with prioritized action items.
- dev-intelligence – a language-agnostic workflow toolkit for session continuity, quality gates, project scaffolding, and tech-debt tracking, including commands like /continue, /init, and /health and auto-validation hooks that run a linter or type-checker after every edit.
Every plugin follows the same simple structure: a SKILL.md with instructions for the agent, a references/ folder of supporting documentation, and an optional examples/ folder of working code. It is a pattern any developer can read, fork, and contribute to.
Better together
The real value shows up when the two standards work in concert. An agent connected to the Hedera Hosted MCP Server can read account balances and construct transactions; the same agent, equipped with the native-services-js or system-contracts skills, knows the right way to structure a token with custom fees, or which response code to handle when an HTS call fails. One gives the agent reach into the network; the other gives it the judgment to use that reach correctly – and to hand you well-formed bytes to sign.
That combination points at where on-chain development is heading. Just as x402 gives agents a native way to pay for resources, MCP and Agent Skills give them a native way to build. As autonomous systems become first-class participants in software development, they need both access and expertise delivered through open, composable standards. Hedera supporting MCP and shipping an open skills marketplace is a bet on exactly that future: agents that don’t just describe what to do on Hedera, but do it – safely, reliably, and with a developer still holding the keys.
Resources
Hedera Hosted MCP Server Information
