Mcpterm

mcpterm

An MCP tool server that provides stateful, TUI-compatible terminal sessions.

This is a proof-of-concept using mcp-go.

Works quite well with Claude Desktop.

Usage

Clone the repo and run make to generate bin/mcpterm.

git clone https://github.com/dwrtz/mcpterm.git
cd mcpterm
make

Move the mcpterm binary to a directory in your PATH.

sudo mv bin/mcpterm /usr/local/bin/mcpterm

Add to Claude Desktop

Edit your claude_desktop_config.json (on Mac it’s in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpterm": {
      "command": "mcpterm",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. Now Claude should see the 2 tools provided by mcpterm.

Tools

run: Runs a command in a stateful terminal session. E.g. if you cd into a directory, subsequent commands will run in that directory.

runScreen: Runs a command or series of keystrokes and returns the screen output. Intended for TUI apps such as vim or a python REPL.

Tips:

You may want to tell Claude to use following control sequences with the runScreen tool:

"^X": "\x18", // Ctrl+X
"^O": "\x0F", // Ctrl+O
"^J": "\x0A", // Enter
"^C": "\x03", // Ctrl+C
"^D": "\x04", // Ctrl+D
"^Z": "\x1A", // Ctrl+Z
"^[": "\x1B", // Escape
"^H": "\x08", // Backspace
"^M": "\x0D", // Carriage return
"^L": "\x0C", // Form feed
"^G": "\x07", // Bell
"^U": "\x15", // Clear line
"^W": "\x17", // Delete word
"^Y": "\x19", // Paste from kill buffer
"^V": "\x16", // Literal input
"^K": "\x0B", // Kill line
"^E": "\x05", // End of line
"^A": "\x01", // Beginning of line
"^I": "\x09", // Tab

While not perfect, it works pretty well. Claude is able to use vim to write a Dockerfile, then run the container in an interactive session, then run commands in the container such as a python REPL.