Desktop Commander MCP
Search, update, manage files and run terminal commands with AI
Work with code and text, run processes, and automate tasks, going far beyond other AI editors - while using host client subscriptions instead of API token costs.
Table of Contents
- Features
- How to install
- Getting Started
- Usage
- File Preview UI & Markdown Editor
- Handling Long-Running Commands
- Work in Progress and TODOs
- Sponsors and Supporters
- Website
- Media
- Testimonials
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Contributing
- License
All of your AI development tools in one place. Desktop Commander puts all dev tools in one chat. Execute long-running terminal commands on your computer and manage processes through Model Context Protocol (MCP). Built on top of MCP Filesystem Server to provide additional search and replace file editing capabilities.
Features
- Remote AI Control - Use Desktop Commander from ChatGPT, Claude web, and other AI services via Remote MCP
- File Preview UI - Visual file previews in Claude Desktop with rendered markdown, inline images, expandable content, built-in markdown editor, and quick "Open in folder" access
- Enhanced terminal commands with interactive process control
- Execute code in memory (Python, Node.js, R) without saving files
- Instant data analysis - just ask to analyze CSV/JSON/Excel files
- Native Excel file support - Read, write, edit, and search Excel files (.xlsx, .xls, .xlsm) without external tools
- PDF support - Read PDFs with text extraction, create new PDFs from markdown, modify existing PDFs
- DOCX support - Read, create, edit, and search Word documents (.docx) with surgical XML editing and markdown-to-DOCX conversion
- Interact with running processes (SSH, databases, development servers)
- Execute terminal commands with output streaming
- Command timeout and background execution support
- Process management (list and kill processes)
- Session management for long-running commands
- Process output pagination - Read terminal output with offset/length controls to prevent context overflow
- Server configuration management:
- Get/set configuration values
- Update multiple settings at once
- Dynamic configuration changes without server restart
- Full filesystem operations:
- Read/write files (text, Excel, PDF, DOCX)
- Create/list directories
- Recursive directory listing with configurable depth and context overflow protection for large folders
- Move files/directories
- Search files and content (including Excel content)
- Get file metadata
- Negative offset file reading: Read from end of files using negative offset values (like Unix tail)
- Code editing capabilities:
- Surgical text replacements for small changes
- Full file rewrites for major changes
- Multiple file support
- Pattern-based replacements
- vscode-ripgrep based recursive code or text search in folders
- Local tool-call history and audit logs:
- Tool calls and arguments are recorded locally on the machine running Desktop Commander
- Recent call history with bounded output previews is available through
get_recent_tool_calls - Size-based rotation/trimming keeps the active history files bounded
- Safety guardrails (not a sandbox — see SECURITY.md):
- Symlink traversal prevention on file operations
- Command blocklist for accidental execution
- Docker isolation for complete isolation
