Portainer MCP connects your AI assistant directly to your Portainer environments, enabling you to manage Portainer resources like users and environments or execute Docker and Kubernetes commands through AI interactions. This tool implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to standardize connections between Portainer's container management capabilities and AI models.
You can download pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64) and macOS (arm64) from the Latest Release Page.
# Example for macOS (ARM64) - adjust version and architecture as needed
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
# Download the checksum file (adjust version/arch)
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
# Verify (macOS)
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
# For Linux
# md5sum -c portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz.md5
# Adjust the filename based on the downloaded version/OS/architecture
tar -xzf portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
$PATH or note its location for configuration.Configure Claude Desktop with the following settings:
{
"mcpServers": {
"portainer": {
"command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
"args": [
"-server",
"[IP]:[PORT]",
"-token",
"[TOKEN]",
"-tools",
"/tmp/tools.yaml"
]
}
}
}
Replace [IP], [PORT], and [TOKEN] with your Portainer instance's IP address, port, and API access token.
You can customize the tool definitions by specifying a custom tools file path:
{
"mcpServers": {
"portainer": {
"command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
"args": [
"-server",
"[IP]:[PORT]",
"-token",
"[TOKEN]",
"-tools",
"/path/to/custom/tools.yaml"
]
}
}
}
By default, the tool definitions are embedded in the binary, and the application will create a tools file at the default location if one doesn't exist.
For enhanced security, enable read-only mode to prevent any modifications to your Portainer resources:
{
"mcpServers": {
"portainer": {
"command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp",
"args": [
"-server",
"[IP]:[PORT]",
"-token",
"[TOKEN]",
"-read-only"
]
}
}
}
In read-only mode:
Portainer MCP is version-specific and validates the Portainer server version at startup.
| Portainer MCP Version | Supported Portainer Version |
|---|---|
| 0.1.0 | 2.28.1 |
| 0.2.0 | 2.28.1 |
| 0.3.0 | 2.28.1 |
The latest version supports the following operations:
There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.
If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.
To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".
When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:
{
"mcpServers": {
"cursor-rules-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"cursor-rules-mcp"
]
}
}
}
To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.
Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.
The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.
You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.