Blog · June 2026 · 6 min read
An AI coding agent with plugins, skills & MCP
A coding agent is only as good as how well it fits your workflow. FreeCoder ships three composable extension points — skills, plugins & hooks, and MCP servers — so you can shape it into exactly the agent your team needs. And it's all free.
Skills: teach it know-how once
A skill is a SKILL.md (plus optional scripts) that packages a repeatable procedure. FreeCoder auto-loads the right skill when a task matches, so you stop re-explaining the same thing every session. Commit skills to your repo and the whole team benefits.
Plugins & hooks: automate around the agent
Hooks run your scripts on agent events — format and lint after every edit, block risky actions with a pre-tool guard, notify a channel when a long job finishes. They run locally and deterministically, which makes them perfect for standards the model should never skip.
MCP: connect your real systems
Through the Model Context Protocol, FreeCoder can operate the tools you already use — read a Linear ticket, query Postgres, drive a browser, check Sentry. The agent doesn't just talk about your systems; it acts on them.
Composed together
The three compose beautifully: skills give the agent knowledge, hooks give it guardrails, and MCP gives it reach. Layer them with subagents and an AGENTS.md, and you've got a free agent tuned to your stack.
irm https://freecoder.space/install.ps1 | iexStart with the getting-started guide, then wire in your first MCP server.
irm https://freecoder.space/install.ps1 | iex — then read the getting-started guide.