Carbon

Carbon MCP

The Carbon Design System, available to any AI agent.

Carbon MCP is a hosted server that gives AI agents direct access to Carbon's components, icons, charts and documentation through MCP, the open Model Context Protocol standard for connecting AI applications to external tools and data. It runs on IBM Cloud, so any MCP client can connect with a URL and an IBMid sign-in. This repository is where you report issues, request features and get the Carbon Builder skill.

Why Carbon MCP

Carbon MCP makes any agentic AI application an instant expert in the Carbon Design System, so teams deliver consistent, high-quality user experiences with greater speed.

Connect

The Carbon MCP server is hosted remotely at https://mcp.carbondesignsystem.com/mcp. Add it to your client as a remote MCP server and sign in with your IBMid when asked.

Clients that read an mcp.json file use this minimal configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "carbon-mcp": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://mcp.carbondesignsystem.com/mcp",
      "oauth": true,
      "alwaysAllow": []
    }
  }
}

The full onboarding and setup guide covers what to have before you begin, the prerequisites, connecting to the server and every client above.

Token and session ID

If your client does not support OAuth discovery, you can authenticate with a token and session ID instead.

1. Generate a token and session ID.
2. Copy your credentials and add them to your Carbon MCP configuration.

Pair it with the Carbon Builder skill

Carbon Builder is a portable AI skill that turns an agent into an expert Carbon Design System engineer. It retrieves live component examples, variants, props and documentation from the Carbon MCP server, generates Carbon React and Web Components code, and builds Carbon Charts across every supported framework.

The server supplies the facts; the skill tells the agent when to ask for them and how to turn the answers into working code. Together they produce better results than either alone.

Install it with the skills CLI, choosing the line for your agent:

npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a bob
npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a claude-code
npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a cursor
npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a codex
npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a github-copilot
npx skills add https://github.com/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/tree/main/public/skills/carbon-builder -g -a gemini-cli

The CLI supports many more agents; see skills.sh. The skill has its own page at skills.sh/carbon-design-system/carbon-mcp/carbon-builder.

To install without the CLI, download carbon-builder.zip, unzip it, and copy the carbon-builder/ folder to your client's skills location. The skill README lists the path for each client, and the onboarding guide walks through it in Set up your AI client and install the Carbon Builder skill.

Tools

Coverage

Carbon MCP continues to evolve. Current coverage:

The Concepts page describes the content in more detail.

Documentation

Issues and support

Open an issue to report a bug, request a feature or ask for help. Templates guide each one.