Portainer MCP

Ever wished you could just ask Portainer what's going on?

Overview

Portainer MCP is a work in progress implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Portainer environments. This project aims to provide a standardized way to connect Portainer's container management capabilities with AI models and other services.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs (Large Language Models). Similar to how USB-C provides a standardized way to connect devices to peripherals, MCP provides a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources and tools.

This implementation focuses on exposing Portainer environment data through the MCP protocol, allowing AI assistants and other tools to interact with your containerized infrastructure in a secure and standardized way.

See the Portainer Version Support and Supported Capabilities sections for more details on compatibility and available features.

Note: This project is currently under development.

It is currently designed to work with a Portainer administrator API token.

Installation

You can download pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64) and macOS (arm64) from the Latest Release Page. Find the appropriate archive for your operating system and architecture under the "Assets" section.

1. Download the archive. You can usually download this directly from the release page.

   Alternatively, you can use curl. Here are examples for downloading the archive for version v0.2.0:

   • Linux (AMD64):

     curl -Lo portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz https://github.com/portainer/portainer-mcp/releases/download/v0.2.0/portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
     

   • macOS (ARM64):

     curl -Lo portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz https://github.com/portainer/portainer-mcp/releases/download/v0.2.0/portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
     

2. (Optional but recommended) Verify the checksum. First, download the corresponding .md5 checksum file. Use curl with the appropriate URL, replacing <VERSION>, <OS>, and <ARCH>.

   • Example for v0.2.0 on Linux (AMD64):

     curl -Lo portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz.md5 https://github.com/portainer/portainer-mcp/releases/download/v0.2.0/portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz.md5
     # Now verify
     md5sum -c portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz.md5
     

   • Example for v0.2.0 on macOS (ARM64):

     curl -Lo portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz.md5 https://github.com/portainer/portainer-mcp/releases/download/v0.2.0/portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz.md5
     # Now verify (output should match the content of the .md5 file)
     if [ "$(md5 -q portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz)" = "$(cat portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz.md5)" ]; then echo "OK"; else echo "FAILED"; fi
     

     If the verification command outputs "OK", the file is intact.

3. Extract the archive:

   tar -xzf portainer-mcp-v<VERSION>-<OS>-<ARCH>.tar.gz
   

   Replace <VERSION>, <OS>, and <ARCH> with the appropriate values (e.g., v0.2.0-linux-amd64). This will extract the portainer-mcp executable.

4. Move the executable to a location in your $PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin) or note its location for the configuration step below.

Usage

With Claude Desktop, configure it like so:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "portainer": {
            "command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
            "args": [
                "-server",
                "[IP]:[PORT]",
                "-token",
                "[TOKEN]"
                "-tools",
                "/tmp/tools.yaml"
            ]
        }
    }
}

[!NOTE] By default, the tool looks for "tools.yaml" in the same directory as the binary. You may need to modify this path as described above, particularly when using AI assistants like Claude that have restricted write permissions to the working directory.

Replace [IP], [PORT] and [TOKEN] with the IP, port and API access token associated with your Portainer instance.

Tool Customization

By default, the tool definitions are embedded in the binary. The application will create a tools file at the default location if one doesn't already exist.

You can customize the tool definitions by specifying a custom tools file path using the -tools flag:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "portainer": {
            "command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
            "args": [
                "-server",
                "[IP]:[PORT]",
                "-token",
                "[TOKEN]",
                "-tools",
                "/path/to/custom/tools.yaml"
            ]
        }
    }
}

The default tools file is available for reference at internal/tooldef/tools.yaml in the source code. You can modify the descriptions of the tools and their parameters to alter how AI models interpret and decide to use them. Important: Do not change the tool names or parameter definitions (other than descriptions), as this will prevent the tools from being properly registered and functioning correctly.

Read-Only Mode

For security-conscious users, the application can be run in read-only mode. This mode ensures that only read operations are available, completely preventing any modifications to your Portainer resources.

To enable read-only mode, add the -read-only flag to your command arguments:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "portainer": {
            "command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
            "args": [
                "-server",
                "[IP]:[PORT]",
                "-token",
                "[TOKEN]",
                "-read-only"
            ]
        }
    }
}

When using read-only mode:

• Only read tools (list, get) will be available to the AI model
• All write tools (create, update, delete) are not loaded
• The Docker proxy requests tool is not loaded

Portainer Version Support

This tool is pinned to support a specific version of Portainer. The application will validate the Portainer server version at startup and fail if it doesn't match the required version.

Portainer MCP Version	Supported Portainer Version
0.1.0	2.28.1
0.2.0	2.28.1

Supported Capabilities

The following table lists the currently (latest version) supported operations through MCP tools:

Resource	Operation	Description	Supported In Version
Environments
	ListEnvironments	List all available environments	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentTags	Update tags associated with an environment	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentUserAccesses	Update user access policies for an environment	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentTeamAccesses	Update team access policies for an environment	0.1.0
Environment Groups (Edge Groups)
	ListEnvironmentGroups	List all available environment groups	0.1.0
	CreateEnvironmentGroup	Create a new environment group	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentGroupName	Update the name of an environment group	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentGroupEnvironments	Update environments associated with a group	0.1.0
	UpdateEnvironmentGroupTags	Update tags associated with a group	0.1.0
Access Groups (Endpoint Groups)
	ListAccessGroups	List all available access groups	0.1.0
	CreateAccessGroup	Create a new access group	0.1.0
	UpdateAccessGroupName	Update the name of an access group	0.1.0
	UpdateAccessGroupUserAccesses	Update user accesses for an access group	0.1.0
	UpdateAccessGroupTeamAccesses	Update team accesses for an access group	0.1.0
	AddEnvironmentToAccessGroup	Add an environment to an access group	0.1.0
	RemoveEnvironmentFromAccessGroup	Remove an environment from an access group	0.1.0
Stacks (Edge Stacks)
	ListStacks	List all available stacks	0.1.0
	GetStackFile	Get the compose file for a specific stack	0.1.0
	CreateStack	Create a new Docker stack	0.1.0
	UpdateStack	Update an existing Docker stack	0.1.0
Tags
	ListEnvironmentTags	List all available environment tags	0.1.0
	CreateEnvironmentTag	Create a new environment tag	0.1.0
Teams
	ListTeams	List all available teams	0.1.0
	CreateTeam	Create a new team	0.1.0
	UpdateTeamName	Update the name of a team	0.1.0
	UpdateTeamMembers	Update the members of a team	0.1.0
Users
	ListUsers	List all available users	0.1.0
	UpdateUser	Update an existing user	0.1.0
	GetSettings	Get the settings of the Portainer instance	0.1.0
Docker
	DockerProxy	Proxy ANY Docker API requests	0.2.0

Development

Code Statistics

The repository includes a helper script cloc.sh to calculate lines of code and other metrics for the Go source files using the cloc tool. You might need to install cloc first (e.g., sudo apt install cloc or brew install cloc).

Run the script from the repository root to see the default summary output:

./cloc.sh

Refer to the comment header within the cloc.sh script for details on available flags to retrieve specific metrics.