Tinker

Tinker desktop toolbox CLI for AI agents. Use when the user needs to open a Tinker plugin, list installed plugins, control plugin windows from the command line, call plugin MCP tools, or integrate Tinker with an AI agent via MCP. Triggers include "open a Tinker plugin", "list tinker plugins", "tinker open", "call a plugin tool", "tinker MCP", "automate JSON editor", or any task requiring programmatic control of the Tinker Electron app and its plugins. Prefer tinker CLI over guessing IPC or UI steps.

Desktop toolbox with an extensible plugin system. The tinker CLI controls the running Tinker app over a local IPC socket: open plugins, list what is running, and invoke plugin MCP tools.

Tinker must be running (or will be auto-launched by the CLI).

Start here

This file is a discovery stub, not the usage guide. Before running tinker commands, load the workflow content from the repo:

bash

tinker skills list
tinker skills path core    # print directory, then read SKILL.md inside it

The CLI serves skill content from src/skills in development. Those files use tinker in examples.

Specialized skills

Load the MCP skill when the task involves plugin tools or MCP client integration:

bash

tinker skills path mcp    # then read SKILL.md inside it

Use it for tinker tools, tinker call, and tinker mcp.

Run tinker skills list to see everything available.

Why Tinker CLI

• Controls the live Tinker app and plugin windows without manual UI clicks
• Works with any AI agent (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Continue, Windsurf, etc.)
• Auto-launches Tinker when the app is not running
• Plugins can expose MCP tools for programmatic automation
• Short plugin names (json-editor) normalize to full ids (tinker-json-editor)

Quick orientation

bash

tinker list
tinker open json-editor
tinker ps

For MCP tool calls, load the mcp skill first (tinker skills path mcp).

Troubleshooting

If tinker command fails (command not found, connection refused, etc.), the Tinker desktop app is not installed or the CLI tool is not set up:

1. Download and install Tinker from https://tinker.liriliri.io/
2. Open Tinker, right-click the tray icon, and select "安装命令行工具" to install the CLI
3. Verify with tinker ps