Skip to content

Claude Code & Desktop

Beyond the Python client, you can drive Chronicle straight from Claude. The chronicle plugin — published in the methodic marketplace at methodic-research/skills — bundles two things:

  • Skills — intent-triggered workflows ("survey the literature on …", "propose an experiment for …", "make a variation that doubles the width") that run in Claude Code.
  • A zero-install MCP server — the chronicle.* tools (internal search, experiment create/read/commit, lifecycle, report write-ups, dataset + image upload, ACL management, run-log search) talking straight to your Chronicle server. It reads the same ~/.methodic/credentials.yaml as the CLI and SDK, so there's no key to paste into a config file.

Both authenticate the same way: create an API key in the Methodic UI and run the one-line setup it shows (it writes ~/.methodic/credentials.yaml). See Authentication for the full resolution order and every environment variable.

Claude Code

Inside Claude Code, add the marketplace and install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add methodic-research/skills
/plugin install chronicle

The skills then auto-trigger by intent, and the bundled MCP server wires up the chronicle.* tools with no extra config (the first tool call prompts for approval). No pip install is needed for the read/CRUD paths — install the methodic-research SDK only for the byte-heavy paths (large or multi-file dataset uploads, agent-side W&B).

Updating

Refreshing the marketplace does not move your installed version on its own — do both, then restart Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace update methodic
/plugin update chronicle@methodic

The full skill list lives in the skills repo README.

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop doesn't run Claude Code skills, but it can run the same MCP server — so you get the chronicle.* tools directly in Desktop, packaged as a one-click MCP bundle (.mcpb).

  1. Download chronicle-<version>.mcpb from the latest release.
  2. Open it in Claude Desktop — double-click, or Settings → Extensions → Install from file.
  3. When prompted, paste your sk_... API key — or leave it blank to reuse ~/.methodic/credentials.yaml if you already ran the CLI setup. The server URL defaults to https://api.methodiclabs.ai.

Note

The bundle is the same server the Claude Code plugin runs, so uploads and credential resolution behave identically. Desktop gives you the tools, not the Claude Code skills (skills are a Claude Code feature).