Agentic engineering

You can hand most Avo work to a coding agent: a new resource, a filter, an action, a dashboard card. What it needs is the same thing you need, the right docs for the version you run. This page sets up Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and the rest with that context, the skills that ship inside the gem, and the MCP server, so the code they write is code you'd have written.

Looking for AI your team uses inside the Avo app, the chat or the MCP server, rather than agents in your editor? That's AI in your Avo app.

Code editors and LLM setup

AI agents generate better code when they have up-to-date Avo documentation in their context. Point your tool at https://docs.avohq.io/4.0/docs-map.md — a map of every Avo 4 docs page and its headings, with links — and the agent will fetch exactly the pages it needs to generate accurate resources, fields, actions, filters, and more.

https://docs.avohq.io/4.0/docs-map.md

Pick your tool

VSCodeCursorZedWindsurfClaudeCodexOpenCodeJetBrains IDEsChatGPTGeminiGrok

Skills

Since avo >= v4.1.1

Skills are pre-built instruction sets that teach your agent how to perform specific Avo workflows. Instead of prompting from scratch each time, you install a skill and the agent follows a proven, repeatable process.

The skills ship inside the avo gem, so they describe the version your app has locked rather than whatever version a globally-installed copy happened to be written for.

Install the loader that finds them with rails g avo:skills:

rails g avo:skills

That starts a short interactive installer — one question per screen, all answered up front, with a summary of exactly what it will do before it writes anything (Avo 4.1.3 and later). It:

• installs into this app, or into your home directory so one copy serves every Avo project
• sets up any of .agents/skills, .claude/skills, and .cursor/skills
• writes one real file and symlinks the others to it, so they cannot drift apart
• offers to remove skills left behind by an older, unversioned install

It writes one small markdown file. The skills themselves are never copied into your repo — the loader resolves them from the installed gem when a task actually needs them.

Skills are organized by vertical — a whole feature area, not a single task — so one skill covers creating, configuring, and troubleshooting that part of Avo.

Keeping them current

They are always current. The skills come from the gem your app has locked, so there is nothing to copy and nothing that can fall behind.

Update your Avo gems with bin/rails avo:update and the skills come with them. Use that task rather than bundle update avo, which moves core alone and leaves each add-on's skills on the version they were already pinned to.

Core

Skill	What it covers
avo-resources	generate and configure resources — title, includes, sorting, pagination, cover/avatar, array (non-DB) resources
avo-fields	add and configure fields in def fields — pick the as: type, options, formatting, layout
avo-associations	wire belongs_to / has_many / has_one / HABTM fields, polymorphism, STI, nested create-in-form
avo-actions	build actions that run Ruby on selected, single, or no records — bulk ops, forms, modals, responses
avo-filters	basic filters on the index — dynamic filters and scopes ship as their own add-on skills
avo-index-views	control how the index renders — table styling, grid cards, map markers, view types
avo-custom-fields	build a brand-new field type — generator plus its Edit/Show/Index view components
avo-menu-icons	pick semantically appropriate Tabler icons and set them on resources and dashboards

Config & ops

Skill	What it covers
avo-setup	install Avo, mount it, authenticate the private gem server, and set the license key
avo-update	bump the Avo gems and apply every upgrade-guide step for the versions crossed, with a log
avo-authentication	tell Avo who the current user is, gate access, and wire roles / profile / sign-out
avo-admin-config	global initializer knobs — app name, per-page, container width, density, home path
avo-performance	caching and stale-row fixes to make the admin fast
avo-testing	unblock the license check in the test suite and use Avo's test helpers
avo-multitenancy	scope the admin per tenant — route- or session-based, with an account switcher

Customization

Skill	What it covers
avo-branding-appearance	make the admin look like the product — logo, favicon, color scheme, palettes, CSS re-skin, icons
avo-navigation-search	per-resource search, breadcrumbs, keyboard shortcuts, and the auto-generated sidebar
avo-custom-ui	build custom pages, embedded panels, dynamic/nested forms, eject views, JS/Stimulus, Tailwind
avo-i18n	translate and localize the admin — labels, locale switching, RTL
avo-media-library	turn on the central asset browser and the picker inside rich-text editors
avo-controllers	override per-resource CRUD controller hooks and safely extend Avo's ApplicationController
avo-engine-internals	engine plumbing for custom Ruby — main_app/avo helpers, Avo::Current, ExecutionContext, reserved names

Add-ons

Separately-licensed gems (paid add-on or Enterprise). These skills ship inside their own gem, not inside avo.

Skill	What it covers
avo-dashboards-cards	dashboards (grids of cards) and the six card types — metrics, charts, tables, lists
avo-notifications	in-app notifications — bell dropdown, levels, action buttons, optional realtime
avo-rest-api	JSON REST API over every resource, with token auth and a per-token permission matrix
avo-forms-and-pages	model-agnostic forms (settings, imports, workflows) and sidebar page hierarchies
avo-kanban	DB-backed drag-and-drop boards across resources
avo-audit-logging	track who changed and viewed what — timeline, diffs, revert
avo-collaboration	comments, reactions, and an automatic change-log on a record
avo-authorization	restrict who sees and does what with Pundit policies — resources, actions, associations, files
avo-http-resource	back a resource with an external HTTP API instead of Active Record
avo-menu	build the sidebar with the menu editor DSL — sections, dividers, links, icons, per-user visibility
avo-scopes	one-click segment tabs above the index, with counts and a default view
avo-dynamic-filters	let end users build their own ad-hoc filters from a filters bar
avo-advanced-search	the Cmd + K global search palette, and type-to-search association pickers
avo-record-reordering	persistent up/down and drag-and-drop record ordering
avo-custom-controls	take over the show/edit/index/row button bars — relabel, remove, add links/actions/dropdowns
avo-ai-tools	configure, extend, and replace the tools the AI assistant may call
avo-ai-onboarding	teach the AI assistant your app — audit it, interview you, write its app_context prompt

Cross-cutting

Skill	What it covers
avo-aware	keep the admin in sync when you change a Rails model, even when the request never mentions Avo
avo-troubleshoot	diagnose a broken or misbehaving Avo app, organized by symptom

Paid add-on skills arrive with their gems — install avo-kanban and its skill comes with it. The loader lists what your app actually has, and names the add-on for anything it does not, so an agent never describes a feature you cannot use.

One loader for every project

Choose This machine when the installer asks where the loader should go.

The loader carries no version knowledge — it finds the app by walking up from the working directory and reads that app's Gemfile.lock — so a single copy serves every Avo project on the machine, each resolving its own version. Install once and you are done.

The per-app install is still worth it for a team: the loader is one small file you commit, so everyone gets it on git pull rather than each person installing it themselves.

MCP server

For agents that support MCP, the Context7 MCP server serves up-to-date docs for many libraries, including Avo. The agent queries it for the exact docs it needs while building features, instead of relying on stale training data.

For example, to add it to Claude Code, run:

claude mcp add context7 -- npx -y @upstash/context7-mcp

Each editor's setup page covers how to add it to that tool. Then write use context7 at the end of your prompt.

Suggested workflow

1. Set up your editor with the Avo LLM context — see above.
2. Install the Avo skills loader — run rails g avo:skills in your app.
3. Describe what you want to build. The agent will follow the skill workflow and reference the docs automatically.
4. Optionally connect the Context7 MCP server so the agent can query Avo's docs directly.