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Installation Guide

ExcelMcp ships two equal entry points — the MCP Server for AI assistants and the CLI for scripting, RPA, and CI/CD. Pick the guide that matches how you'll use it (or read both, they're independent):

Guide Best For
📖 Installing the MCP Server AI assistants — GitHub Copilot, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and any other MCP client
📖 Installing the CLI Scripting, RPA, CI/CD pipelines, and coding agents that prefer a token-efficient single tool

Both require Windows OS and Microsoft Excel 2016+ — no .NET runtime needed for the standalone exe distributions.

Tip: The VS Code Extension bundles the MCP Server only (install the CLI separately if you need it for scripting). The GitHub Copilot plugins are separate — install excel-mcp and/or excel-cli depending on which entry point you need — see the MCP Server guide's Quick Start for the one-click paths.

Agent Skills Installation (Cross-Platform)

Best for: Adding AI guidance to coding agents (Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, Gemini, Codex, etc.)

The VS Code extension auto-installs the excel-mcp skill only. Plugins and skills are different things: plugins are packaged surface integrations, while skills are reusable AI guidance. For the excel-cli skill, or for environments where you want skills directly, use the commands below:

## CLI skill (for coding agents - token-efficient workflows)
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-cli

## MCP skill (for conversational AI - rich tool schemas)
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-mcp

## Interactive install - prompts to select excel-cli, excel-mcp, or both
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel

## Install for specific agents
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-cli -a cursor
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-mcp -a claude-code

## Install both skills
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill '*'

## Install globally (user-wide)
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-cli --global

Supports 43+ agents including claude-code, github-copilot, cursor, windsurf, gemini-cli, codex, goose, cline, continue, replit, and more.

Manual Installation: 1. Download excel-skills-v{version}.zip from GitHub Releases 2. The package contains both skills: - skills/excel-cli/ - for coding agents (Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf) - skills/excel-mcp/ - for conversational AI (Claude Desktop, VS Code Chat) 3. Extract the skill(s) you need to your AI assistant's skills directory: - Copilot: ~/.copilot/skills/excel-cli/ or ~/.copilot/skills/excel-mcp/ - Claude Code: .claude/skills/excel-cli/ or .claude/skills/excel-mcp/ - Cursor: .cursor/skills/excel-cli/ or .cursor/skills/excel-mcp/

See: Agent Skills Documentation

Getting Help

Happy automating! 🚀