vCluster YAML MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI assistants query and validate vCluster YAML configurations directly from GitHub.

What Does It Do?

This MCP server provides AI assistants with tools to:

• Query vCluster configuration options and schemas
• Validate YAML configurations
• Search for specific settings using natural language
• Query any version with explicit version parameters (stateless)
• Extract validation rules from comments

Key feature: No local files needed. All data is fetched live from the vCluster GitHub repository.

How It Works

The server uses the GitHub API to fetch vCluster YAML configurations, schemas, and documentation directly from the source:

1. GitHub as Source of Truth: Queries github.com/loft-sh/vcluster repository
2. Stateless Version Queries: Every tool accepts an optional version parameter (e.g., v0.19.0, main)
3. Parallel Version Support: Query multiple versions simultaneously without state conflicts
4. Live Data: Always fetches the latest configuration for the requested version
5. Smart Caching: 15-minute in-memory cache to avoid overloading GitHub API

graph LR
    A[Claude/AI] --> B[MCP Server]
    B --> C[GitHub API]
    C --> D[vCluster Repository]
    B --> E[Parse YAML/JSON]
    E --> F[Return Structured Data]
    F --> A

Installation

Option 1: Local (stdio)

Run the server locally via npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vcluster-yaml": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "vcluster-yaml-mcp-server@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Option 2: Remote (HTTP)

Use the public instance (always running latest version):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vcluster-yaml": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://vcluster-yaml.cloudrumble.net/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Command-Line Interface

The package also provides a standalone CLI for quick queries and validation without MCP setup:

# Quick start with npx (no installation)
npx vcluster-yaml-mcp-server query sync

# Or install globally
npm install -g vcluster-yaml-mcp-server
vcluster-yaml query sync

# Validate configurations with ease
vcluster-yaml validate my-config.yaml
cat my-config.yaml | vcluster-yaml validate -
vcluster-yaml validate my-config.yaml --schema-version v0.24.0

# Shell completion (bash/zsh)
vcluster-yaml completion bash 2>/dev/null > ~/.vcluster-yaml-completion.bash
vcluster-yaml completion zsh 2>/dev/null > ~/.zsh/completion/_vcluster-yaml

📖 Full CLI Documentation →

Available Tools

Version Discovery

list-versions - Browse all available vCluster versions

// Returns tags (releases) and branches
// Example output: v0.19.0, v0.20.0, main, etc.

Configuration Queries

All query tools accept an optional version parameter (defaults to "main"):

smart-query - Universal search using dot notation or natural language

smart-query --query="controlPlane.ingress.enabled" --version="v0.19.0"
smart-query --query="namespace syncing" --version="main"
smart-query --query="etcd"  // Defaults to "main"

Output Format (kubectl-style):

Found 4 matches for "replicas" in chart/values.yaml (v0.24.0)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MATCH: controlPlane.statefulSet.highAvailability.replicas
TYPE:  integer
VALUE: 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MATCH: controlPlane.coredns.deployment.replicas
TYPE:  integer
VALUE: 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MATCH: controlPlane.statefulSet.highAvailability
TYPE:  object

FIELDS:
  replicas <integer>
    value: 1

  leaseDuration <integer>
    value: 60

  renewDeadline <integer>
    value: 40

  retryPeriod <integer>
    value: 15

RELATED CONFIGS:
  • controlPlane.statefulSet.resources - Resource limits for HA mode
  • controlPlane.backingStore.etcd.deploy.statefulSet.highAvailability

Features:

• ✅ Structured output - kubectl-style format
• ✅ Type information - Every value shows its type (integer, string, boolean, array, object)
• ✅ Relevance ranking - Exact matches appear first, results sorted by relevance
• ✅ Related configs - Suggests commonly configured fields together
• ✅ Smart formatting - Objects show structure, not full content dumps
• ✅ LLM-friendly - Easy to parse and understand for AI assistants

Config Creation & Validation

All validation tools accept an optional version parameter (defaults to "main"):

create-vcluster-config - Create and validate configs in one step (PRIMARY TOOL)

// Claude uses this when generating configs for you
// Ensures every generated config is validated before you see it
create-vcluster-config --yaml_content="<generated-yaml>" --description="Node sync config" --version="v0.24.0"

// Returns:
// ✅ Configuration validated successfully!
// Version: v0.24.0
// Section: sync
// Validation time: 45ms
//
// ### Configuration:
// [your YAML here]

When version is omitted and the MCP client supports elicitation (Claude Code 2.1.76+), the server prompts the user to pick from available GitHub tags before validating. Clients without elicitation support silently fall back to main.

validate-config - Validate existing YAML configs

// Validate user-provided configs against specific version
validate-config --content="<your-yaml>" --version="v0.24.0"

// Validate files from GitHub
validate-config --file="chart/values.yaml" --version="main"

// Works with full configs or partial snippets (auto-detects section)
// Returns: { valid: true/false, errors: [...], section: "...", version: "...", elapsed_ms: <100 }

extract-validation-rules - Get validation rules from YAML comments

extract-validation-rules --section="controlPlane" --version="v0.24.0"
// Returns: { rules, enums, dependencies, defaults }
// Extracts constraints like "Valid values: a, b, c"

Resources

server://info - Server metadata including version and available tools

// Returns: name, version, description, availableTools, build info, runtime

server://changelog - Release history

// Returns: version, content (from CHANGELOG.md)
// AI assistants check this on first use to mention relevant recent changes

Usage Examples

Interactive Config Creation (Primary Workflow)

Ask Claude:

"Create a vCluster config with node sync enabled and etcd embedded"

Claude will:

1. Use smart-query or extract-validation-rules to research options
2. Generate the YAML configuration
3. Automatically call create-vcluster-config to validate
4. Return validated, ready-to-use configuration

Why this works: The create-vcluster-config tool forces Claude to validate every config it generates. You'll always get validated configs.

Validate User-Provided Configuration

Ask Claude:

"Is this ingress configuration valid for vCluster v0.24?"

ingress:
  enabled: true
  host: "my-vcluster.example.com"

Claude will:

1. Use validate-config with --version="v0.24.0" parameter
2. Report any validation errors with specific paths
3. Suggest fixes if needed

Explore vCluster Options

Ask Claude:

"What high availability options are available in vCluster v0.19.0?"

Claude will use:

• smart-query with --version="v0.19.0" to find HA-related settings
• No need to "switch" versions - query directly with version parameter

Compare Versions

Ask Claude:

"How did the sync.fromHost configuration change between v0.19.0 and v0.20.0?"

Claude will use:

• smart-query with --version="v0.19.0" for first version
• smart-query with --version="v0.20.0" for second version
• Can query both versions in parallel (stateless design)

Token Optimization

This server is designed for efficient token usage with the new kubectl-style format:

Tool	Tokens	Strategy	Performance
create-vcluster-config	~300-600	Validation + formatted response with emoji indicators	<100ms
validate-config	~200-500	Fast validation, precise errors only	<100ms
smart-query	~800-1.5K	Structured output (was ~2K with JSON dumps), limits to 50 matches	<100ms
extract-validation-rules	~2-5K	Section-specific filtering, cache for knowledge base	<100ms

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run locally (stdio)
node src/index.js

# Test with MCP Inspector
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node src/index.js
# Open http://localhost:5173

# Run tests
npm test

# Run HTTP server locally
npm run start:http
# Server runs on http://localhost:3000

Technical Details

• SDK: @modelcontextprotocol/sdk v1.25.2 using McpServer high-level API
• Node: >=18
• Transport: Both stdio (local) and HTTP/SSE (remote)
• Dependencies: js-yaml for parsing, node-jq for querying, node-fetch for GitHub API
• Tool Annotations: All tools include readOnlyHint/destructiveHint for client optimization
• Server Instructions: Includes instructions for MCP tool search auto mode

Release Process

This project uses automated CI/CD workflows for releases to npm, Docker Hub, and GitHub Releases.

📖 Release Documentation →

Links

• vCluster GitHub
• Model Context Protocol
• MCP Specification

License

MIT