Registry Overview

How extension registries work — Git-backed repos of community connectors, tools, and agents.

Extension registries are Git-backed directories that contain ready-to-use connectors, tools, and agents. Install one with a single command and immediately gain access to dozens of integrations — Jira, Confluence, Slack, RSS, Stack Overflow, and more.

The design follows the same model as cheat/cheat: multiple registry paths with precedence ordering, a read-only community repository, and transparent overrides for local customization.

What’s in a registry?

A registry is a directory (usually a Git repository) containing Lua scripts organized by type:

registry.toml                    # manifest describing all extensions
connectors/
  rss/connector.lua              # RSS/Atom feed connector
  jira/connector.lua             # Jira Cloud connector
  slack/connector.lua            # Slack channel history
tools/
  web-fetch/tool.lua             # Fetch and extract web content
  create-jira-ticket/tool.lua    # Create Jira tickets
agents/
  researcher/agent.lua           # KB research agent
  incident-responder/agent.lua   # Incident response agent

The registry.toml manifest describes each extension with metadata, tags, required configuration, and host API usage:

[registry]
name = "community"
description = "Official Context Harness community extensions"

[connectors.rss]
description = "Ingest articles from RSS and Atom feeds"
path = "connectors/rss/connector.lua"
tags = ["rss", "atom", "feed", "blog", "news"]
required_config = ["feed_url"]
host_apis = ["http"]

Precedence

When the same extension exists in multiple registries, the highest-precedence source wins:

1. Explicit ctx.toml entries — always highest priority
2. .ctx/ project-local directory — per-project overrides
3. Personal registry — writable, for your customizations
4. Company registry — shared across your team (usually read-only)
5. Community registry — the official open-source collection

This mirrors how cheat/cheat handles cheatpaths: community content provides sensible defaults, and you override at any level without merge conflicts.

Auto-discovery

Tools and agents from registries are automatically available via the MCP server — no config needed. They appear alongside built-in tools when you run ctx serve mcp.

Connectors require explicit activation because they need credentials. Use ctx registry add connectors/<name> to scaffold the config entry, then fill in your credentials.

The community registry

The official community registry lives at parallax-labs/ctx-registry and currently includes:

Install it with a single command:

ctx registry init