APKTool MCP server

The apktool-mcp-server is a specialized server that connects the Apktool Android reverse engineering software with Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This integration enables real-time code analysis, vulnerability detection, and AI-assisted recommendations during Android app reverse engineering.

Installation

Download and Setup

# 1. Download the latest release from GitHub
https://github.com/zinja-coder/apktool-mcp-server/releases

# 2. Unzip the downloaded file
unzip apktool-mcp-server-<version>.zip

# 3. Navigate to the extracted directory
cd apktool-mcp-server

# 4. Install uv (dependency manager)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# 5. (Optional) If you encounter dependency issues, set up a virtual environment
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # or .venv\Scripts\activate on Windows

# 6. (Optional) Install required dependencies
uv pip install httpx fastmcp

Claude Desktop Configuration

To connect the MCP server with Claude:

1. Ensure Claude Desktop is running with MCP enabled
2. Configure Claude to recognize the apktool-mcp-server:

# Open the Claude Desktop configuration file
nano ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

3. Add the following configuration (replace paths with your actual installation paths):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apktool-mcp-server": {
            "command": "/<path>/<to>/uv", 
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "</PATH/TO/>apktool-mcp-server/",
                "run",
                "apktool_mcp_server.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Usage

Once the server is configured and running, you can interact with your decompiled Android applications through Claude, leveraging AI capabilities for your reverse engineering tasks.

What You Can Do

• Decompile Android applications and have Claude analyze the code in real-time
• Get context-aware code reviews from Claude
• Receive AI recommendations during reverse engineering
• Perform vulnerability detection
• Generate documentation for the analyzed code

Workflow

1. Start Claude Desktop with MCP enabled
2. The apktool-mcp-server will automatically connect
3. Navigate through your decompiled Android application code
4. Claude will provide real-time analysis and can respond to your specific questions about the code

Sample Use Cases

• Ask Claude to explain complex code segments
• Request vulnerability assessments in the decompiled code
• Get help with understanding obfuscated code
• Generate documentation for undocumented components
• Analyze the app's structure and behavior

For best results, be specific in your prompts to Claude about which aspects of the code you want to analyze or understand.

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 "apktool-mcp-server" '{"command":"/<path>/<to>/uv","args":["--directory","</PATH/TO/>apktool-mcp-server/","run","apktool_mcp_server.py"]}'

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": {
        "apktool-mcp-server": {
            "command": "/<path>/<to>/uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "</PATH/TO/>apktool-mcp-server/",
                "run",
                "apktool_mcp_server.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

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": {
        "apktool-mcp-server": {
            "command": "/<path>/<to>/uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "</PATH/TO/>apktool-mcp-server/",
                "run",
                "apktool_mcp_server.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect