AI-Powered Pickaxe Development Pipeline with Claude Code + MCP

I wrote a couple weeks ago about my Pickaxe MCP server for Claude Code. Since then I’ve been working more on automating the analysis and creation process of Pickaxes:

Creating and maintaining agents manually through the dashboard works fine for one-offs, but when you’re iterating on prompts, managing knowledge bases, and auditing performance across dozens of agents, it gets tedious fast.

So I built a system that lets me manage Pickaxe from my terminal using Claude Code and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

What I Built

  1. MCP Server (mcp-pickaxe) - Connects Claude directly to the Pickaxe API
  2. Specialized Agents - Claude subagents that handle specific tasks
  3. Automation Skills - Reusable workflows for common operations

The MCP Server

Published on npm as mcp-pickaxe. It gives Claude access to:

  • Chat history analysis
  • Document/KB management (create, connect, disconnect)
  • User management and usage stats
  • Multi-studio support (switch between studios in one session)

What it CAN’T do (yet): Create pickaxes themselves - that still requires the dashboard.

The Agent Pipeline

I have 4 specialized Claude agents that work together:

Agent Purpose
Pickaxe Auditor Reviews studio health - activation rates, KB quality, pricing gaps
Pickaxe Planner Designs new agents with implementation-ready specs
Pickaxe Builder Walks through dashboard configuration section by section
Pickaxe Uploader Handles document creation and KB connections

Example Workflow: Gap Analysis → New Agent

  1. “Audit my RRHUB studio” → Auditor analyzes users, chat history, KB quality
  2. Auditor identifies: “Users asking about document analysis but no agent handles it”
  3. “Plan a Document Analyzer agent” → Planner creates full spec
  4. Spec includes: system prompt, token settings, KB connections, test cases
  5. “Upload these KB documents” → Uploader pushes to Pickaxe (75% success rate, there’s still some manual connection and oversight needed)
  6. I manually create the agent in dashboard using the spec (copy-paste)

The Latest Addition: Comet Skill Creator

I just added a Claude skill that generates shortcuts for Perplexity’s Comet browser. Now I can say “create a Comet shortcut that automates Pickaxe agent creation” and get a ready-to-paste automation prompt. Now I invoke the skill in Comet, attach the spec file and away it goes.

The dream: eventually automate the dashboard itself via browser automation (or maybe more facility to do this in the API?). Here’s a video of the pickaxe creation being automated in Comet while I watch (albeit a bit slow)

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Holy Cow, @jim ! Incredible. I am planning a social media generator where each vertical might have its own KB, including glossary/terms.

I’d love to play with the other tooling, if there are parts that do not rely on the API.

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