Portainer Container Management MCP server for AI agents

Portainer MCP connects your AI assistant directly to your Portainer environments, allowing you to manage resources like users and environments, or execute Docker and Kubernetes commands through conversational AI. It implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to provide a standardized way to connect AI models with your containerized infrastructure.

Installation

You can download pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64, arm64) and macOS (arm64) from the Latest Release Page.

Download and Extract

# 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

# Extract the archive
tar -xzf portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

Verify Checksum (Optional but Recommended)

# Download the checksum file
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 (for 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, use: md5sum -c portainer-mcp-v0.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz.md5

After extraction, move the executable to a location in your $PATH or note its location for configuration.

Basic Usage

Configure with Claude Desktop

{
    "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 details and API access token.

Advanced Configuration Options

Disable Version Check

If your Portainer version doesn't match the supported version, you can bypass the version check:

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

Read-Only Mode

For enhanced security, you can run in read-only mode which prevents any modifications:

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

Custom Tool Definitions

You can customize the tool definitions by specifying a custom tools file:

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

Portainer Version Compatibility

The tool is designed to work with specific Portainer versions:

Portainer MCP Version	Supported Portainer Version
0.1.0	2.28.1
0.2.0	2.28.1
0.3.0	2.28.1
0.4.0	2.29.2
0.4.1	2.29.2
0.5.0	2.30.0
0.6.0	2.31.2

Supported Capabilities

The MCP server supports various operations on Portainer resources:

Environment Management

List environments
Update environment tags
Update user/team access policies for environments

Environment Groups

List, create, and update environment groups
Manage environments and tags within groups

Access Groups

List, create, and update access groups
Manage user/team permissions
Add/remove environments from access groups

Stack Management

List stacks
View stack compose files
Create and update Docker stacks

Tag Management

List and create environment tags

Team Management

List and create teams
Update team names and members

User Management

List users
Update user details
Retrieve Portainer settings

Docker and Kubernetes Integration

Proxy Docker API requests
Proxy Kubernetes API requests
Get stripped-down Kubernetes resources

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

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

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

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.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

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

Adding an MCP server to a project

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.

How to use the MCP server

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 explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

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

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect