carto-basics

CARTO is reachable through two parallel access paths, and most agent setups use one or both:

• CARTO CLI (@carto/carto-cli) — the primary path for authoring, scripting, and headless contexts. Used by most other skills in this catalog.
• CARTO MCP Server — a parallel path for inline interactions in chat-based agent hosts (Claude.ai, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT). Renders maps inline, exposes data discovery and saved-Builder-map preview tools, and dynamically registers the user's saved CARTO Workflows as MCP tools when available.

Use this skill before any other CARTO skill — it covers installation, authentication, profiles, the global CLI flags every other CARTO skill assumes, and how to detect / route between the two access paths.

When to use this skill

• Setting up the CLI for the first time on a new machine.
• The user reports authentication errors (auth status failures, expired tokens).
• The user wants to switch between organizations or environments.
• A downstream skill needs --profile, --json, --token, or --base-url and you don't yet know how those work.

Quick start