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Local

The agent reads each pattern from a copy of the corpus bundled with the skill — fully offline, zero network. The skill ships with the catalog, the Foundations rules, and every pattern file on disk; retrieval never leaves your machine.

What gets read, and from where​

Local is a retrieval mechanism, not a different brain — the selection logic is identical to every other variant; only the retrieval step changes. Every input sits on disk under the skill's own directory; nothing is fetched:

  • Catalog — local. The skill reads patterns.json to select pattern IDs. Each entry carries a source.path field pointing at that pattern's bundled file.
  • Pattern files — local. For each selected ID, the skill reads ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/{source.path} (for example components/toast.basic.md) and extracts Must Haves, Don'ts, Golden Pattern, and Customizable.
  • Foundations rules — local. The skill reads global_rules.md and applies each rule by scope.

The skill's only allowed tool is Read — there is no network step at all.

Install​

Download: a11y-context-web-react-local.zip ↓

Unzip into your tool's skills directory — the same one-step install as HTTP, but the folder carries the whole corpus:

BASH
unzip a11y-context-web-react-local.zip -d .claude/skills/

The skill folder bundles the catalog, the Foundations rules, and a components/ directory of pattern files:

your-project/
├── .claude/
│   └── skills/
│       └── a11y-context-web-react-local/
│           ├── SKILL.md          # brain: invocation + selection + read step
│           ├── patterns.json     # local catalog (with source.path)
│           ├── global_rules.md   # local Foundations rules
│           └── components/       # bundled pattern files (accordion.basic.md … tooltip.basic.md)
├── src/
└── package.json

Install locations for other tools (Cursor, Copilot, Codex, …) are on the Downloads page.

When to pick Local​

Pick Local when you need offline operation or a pinned, deterministic snapshot — an air-gapped environment, a build you want reproducible, or an org that controls when pattern updates roll out:

  • Works offline. No network dependency; safe in air-gapped or network-restricted environments.
  • Fastest retrieval. Local disk reads, no HTTP latency.
  • Pinned corpus version. The bundled corpus carries a catalog_revision; your builds stay reproducible until you choose to re-download.

The honest trade-offs​

Local is the right call for offline and pinned use — but be clear-eyed about the costs when neither applies:

  • Refresh cadence. The bundle can drift from the live corpus. Watch the Release Notes for catalog_revision bumps and re-download to update.
  • A small quality dip, and no token savings. In the same controlled experiment, Local ran roughly 4 percentage points lower on manual pass rate than HTTP and MCP (p = 0.054 — just shy of significance), with none of HTTP's token-cost advantage.

Net: reach for Local when offline or determinism is the requirement. Otherwise HTTP or MCP is the better default.

Not Local if…​

  • You have network access and want the cheapest, always-current path — use HTTP.
  • You're already MCP-native and want retrieval composable with your other MCP sources — use the MCP server.
  • You have existing enterprise retrieval infrastructure to reuse — see Custom / Enterprise RAG.

Verifying​

After unzipping, run the prompts on Verify It's Working. The agent should select pattern IDs from the catalog, then read the matching components/{id}.md files from disk before generating UI code.

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