Tools View (browse installed CLIs + linked skills)

What it is

The Tools view is a dedicated virtual project that lists every CLI Omniscio integrates with — currently 29 tools across ten categories (AI Agents, Runtimes, Git, Cloud, Containers, Media, Browser, Skill CLIs, System, Security). Every one is a public tool any user can get; a CLI that exists only on one person's machine is never part of this list, and instead appears (italic, under Installed) on that one machine once the list's Scan now button finds it on the PATH. Each tool row shows install status and, when installed, its detected version. Selecting a tool opens a detail pane with the description, install status chip, an Install button for auto-installable tools (or a View Instructions link for system-level ones like Node.js), and a Used by skills row with chips for the skills installed on this machine that depend on that tool. Clicking a skill chip jumps straight to the Skills view with that skill selected. Settings → Connected Tools (the update-focused panel) is kept, not replaced — it still owns auto-update behaviour, the pending-updates queue, and developer overrides. The Tools view is the discovery surface ("what's available and what needs a skill?"); Toolchain Settings is the control surface ("how do updates roll out?").

Playwright MCP and Superpowers are not shown in the Tools view because they aren't CLI binaries — they're Claude Code concepts (an MCP server registered in ~/.claude.json, and a plugin from a marketplace). They have their own onboarding step and post-onboarding nudge banner. See mandatory-claude-extensions.md.

Where to find it

Click Tools (wrench icon) in the left sidebar — it appears as a virtual project next to Skills, Recipes, Gmail, etc. From Settings → Connected Tools you can also click the See all tools → link next to the "Connected Tools" description.

How it behaves

How to use it

1. Open it. Click Tools (wrench icon) in the left sidebar — it appears as a virtual project next to Skills, Recipes, Gmail, etc. From Settings → Connected Tools you can also click the See all tools → link next to the "Connected Tools" description.
2. Browse by category. The sub-sidebar groups tools under category headers (AI Agents, Runtimes, Git, …) in a stable order. Each row shows the tool name plus an Installed (emerald) or Error (red) badge when a check result is cached; uncached rows show no badge. Type in the search box to filter by name, id, or description (case-insensitive).
3. Inspect a tool. Click any row. The detail pane shows the tool name, category + type chips, description, and a status chip: Installed vX.Y.Z (click to copy the version to clipboard) or Not installed. Error status surfaces the probe error inline with an alert icon.
4. Install a tool. For auto-installable tools (autoInstallable: true), the detail pane shows an Install button that calls TOOLCHAIN_INSTALL_TOOL. While the install runs the button shows a spinner (isInstalling state from toolchain-update-store), and on success the status chip flips to the new version. Non-auto-installable tools (e.g. Node.js — OS-level) show a View Instructions link to their docs site instead.
5. Jump to linked skills. When a tool has linkedSkillIds authored, a Used by skills row appears with one chip per linked skill that is installed on this machine — a linked skill you do not have is not shown, and the row disappears when none are installed (prefixes like user: / plugin: are stripped for display). Click a chip to navigate to the Skills view with that skill pre-selected — handy when a skill's install guide tells you to grab ffmpeg first.

For agents

How it works

The Tools view is registered as a virtual project via TOOLS_PROJECT_ID = '__tools__' in src/shared/types.ts; the Dashboard routes it into the sub-sidebar + main-view split at src/renderer/src/features/dashboard/Dashboard.tsx. The UI is two components — src/renderer/src/features/tools/ToolsSubSidebar.tsx for the category-grouped list with search, and src/renderer/src/features/tools/ToolsView.tsx for the detail pane (header chips, install button, linked-skill chips, docs link). A minimal Zustand store at src/renderer/src/stores/tools-store.ts owns { definitions, activeId, searchQuery, isLoaded }; its init() is guarded by a module-level flag so re-mounts don't refetch. The list itself is code-shipped (not a remote catalog) — TOOL_DEFINITIONS lives in src/main/services/toolchain/toolchain-registry.ts (re-exported, alongside the CHECK_FNS / INSTALL_FNS tables, through the toolchain-installer.ts facade), and is served to the renderer through TOOLCHAIN_GET_DEFINITIONS. Probe results live in src/renderer/src/stores/toolchain-update-store.ts as checkResults: Record<ToolId, ToolCheckResult>, populated by TOOLCHAIN_CHECK_ALL at app startup and updated incrementally after each install. linkedSkillIds is an authored field on each ToolDefinition — the mapping is hand-maintained in TOOL_DEFINITIONS, not discovered from skill frontmatter, because one tool may serve skills that never name it explicitly (e.g. ffmpeg → user:video-ocr). Clicking a skill chip calls useSessionStore.getState().setActiveProject(SKILLS_PROJECT_ID) + useSkillsStore.getState().setActive(skillId) — pure client-side navigation, no IPC. Settings → Connected Tools is untouched functionally; it still owns pendingToolUpdates, the deferred-update queue, and developer overrides — see toolchain-update-v3.md for how that half works.

Related

• toolchain-update-v3.md — how tool updates (silent vs deferred) are handled from Settings → Connected Tools
• mandatory-claude-extensions.md — Playwright MCP + Superpowers plugin (Claude-Code-side extensions, installed in parallel with tools during onboarding)
• use-skills.md — the Skills view that linked-skill chips navigate into