Which integrations are available for this server?

Supports legacy Delphi and Pascal projects by providing tools to read and write source files and UI text in legacy encodings like Windows-1251. Facilitates the maintenance of legacy PHP and HTML websites by providing encoding-aware file operations and regex search capabilities for localized content. Provides automatic detection and conversion between various legacy encodings and Unicode, ensuring data integrity for files with non-UTF-8 text.

MCP File Tools

Non-UTF-8 file encoding server: Cyrillic (CP1251, KOI8), Windows-1250-1258, ISO-8859 with auto-detection and Unicode conversion. Lets AI assistants read and write files in legacy encodings that would otherwise corrupt data.

Perfect for: Delphi/Pascal projects, legacy VB6 apps, old PHP/HTML sites, config files with non-UTF-8 text.

What It Does

Provides 19 tools for file operations with automatic encoding conversion:

read_text_file - Read files with encoding auto-detection and conversion
read_multiple_files - Read multiple files concurrently with encoding support
write_file - Write files in specific encodings
edit_file - Line-based edits with diff preview and whitespace-flexible matching
copy_file - Copy a file to a new location
delete_file - Delete a file
list_directory - Browse directories with pattern filtering
tree - Compact indented tree view (85% fewer tokens than JSON)
directory_tree - Get recursive tree view as JSON (deprecated, use tree)
search_files - Recursively search for files matching glob patterns
grep_text_files - Regex search in file contents with encoding support
detect_encoding - Auto-detect file encoding with confidence score
convert_encoding - Convert file between encodings
detect_line_endings - Detect line ending style (CRLF/LF/mixed)
list_encodings - Show all supported encodings
get_file_info - Get file/directory metadata
create_directory - Create directories recursively (mkdir -p)
move_file - Move or rename files and directories
list_allowed_directories - Show accessible directories

Supported encodings (22 total):

Unicode: UTF-8, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE (with BOM detection for UTF-16 and UTF-32)
Cyrillic: Windows-1251, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, CP866, ISO-8859-5
Western European: Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15
Central European: Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2
Greek: Windows-1253, ISO-8859-7
Turkish: Windows-1254, ISO-8859-9
Other: Hebrew (1255), Arabic (1256), Baltic (1257), Vietnamese (1258), Thai (874)

See TOOLS.md for detailed parameters and examples.

Security: All operations restricted to allowed directories only.

Installation

MCP Registry

This server is listed in the Official MCP Registry for discovery.

Windows x64

# Download mkdir -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools" iwr "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_windows_amd64.exe" -OutFile "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe" # Install with Claude Code claude mcp add file-tools "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe"

Linux x64

# Download mkdir -p ~/.local/bin curl -L "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_linux_amd64" -o ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools chmod +x ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools # Install with Claude Code claude mcp add file-tools ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools

macOS ARM64

# Download mkdir -p ~/.local/bin curl -L "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_darwin_arm64" -o ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools chmod +x ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools # Install with Claude Code claude mcp add file-tools ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools

Go Install (All Platforms)

# Install with Go (requires Go 1.23+) go install github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/cmd/mcp-file-tools@latest # Add to Claude Code (Linux/macOS) claude mcp add file-tools $(go env GOPATH)/bin/mcp-file-tools

# Add to Claude Code (Windows PowerShell) claude mcp add file-tools "$(go env GOPATH)\bin\mcp-file-tools.exe"

Other Clients

For Claude Desktop, VSCode, or Cursor, use the downloaded binary path in your config:

Claude Desktop (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{ "mcpServers": { "file-tools": { "command": "/path/to/mcp-file-tools" } } }

VSCode / Cursor - Two options:

Option 1: Global config (recommended) - Available in all projects

CLI command (easiest):

claude mcp add --scope user file-tools -- "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe" "D:\Projects"

Or manually edit %USERPROFILE%\.claude.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "file-tools": { "type": "stdio", "command": "C:\\Users\\YOUR_NAME\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\mcp-file-tools\\mcp-file-tools.exe", "args": ["D:\\Projects"] } } }

Option 2: Per-project config - Create .mcp.json in project root:

{ "mcpServers": { "file-tools": { "type": "stdio", "command": "C:\\Users\\YOUR_NAME\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\mcp-file-tools\\mcp-file-tools.exe", "args": ["D:\\Projects", "D:\\Other\\Directory"] } } }

Note: The type: "stdio" field is required. The args array specifies allowed directories - the VSCode extension does not automatically add the workspace directory, so you must list all directories you want to access.

How to Use

Once installed, just ask Claude:

"List all .pas files in this directory"
"Read config.ini and detect its encoding"
"Show all supported encodings"
"Read MainForm.dfm using CP1251 encoding"

Security: The server only accesses directories you explicitly allow:

Automatic: Claude Desktop/Code provide workspace directories automatically
Manual: Specify directories in config args: ["/path/to/project"]

Configuration

The server can be configured via environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default
`MCP_DEFAULT_ENCODING`	Default encoding for `write_file` when none specified	`cp1251`
`MCP_MEMORY_THRESHOLD`	Memory threshold in bytes. Files smaller are loaded into memory for faster I/O; larger files use streaming. Also affects encoding detection mode.	`67108864` (64MB)

Example (Claude Desktop config):

{ "mcpServers": { "file-tools": { "command": "/path/to/mcp-file-tools", "env": { "MCP_DEFAULT_ENCODING": "utf-8" } } } }

Use Cases

Legacy Codebases

Many legacy projects use non-UTF-8 encodings that AI assistants can't handle natively:

Delphi/Pascal (Windows-1251): Source files with Cyrillic UI text
Visual Basic 6 (Windows-1252): Forms and config files with Western European characters
Legacy PHP/HTML (CP1251, ISO-8859-1): Web apps with localized content
Old config files (Various): INI, properties, registry files with legacy encodings

How it works:

User: Read config.ini and change the title to "Настройки" Assistant: [read_text_file with cp1251] → [modify UTF-8] → [write_file with cp1251]

The original encoding is preserved - files remain compatible with legacy tools.

Development

Prerequisites: Go 1.23+

# Run tests go test ./... # Build go build -o mcp-file-tools ./cmd/mcp-file-tools

Debugging with MCP Inspector

MCP Inspector provides a web UI for testing MCP servers.

Prerequisites: Node.js v18+

# Run with allowed directory (required) npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector go run ./cmd/mcp-file-tools -- /path/to/allowed/dir # Or with built binary npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector ./mcp-file-tools.exe C:\Projects

Opens a browser where you can view tools, call them with custom arguments, and inspect responses.

Manual Debugging

Run the server with an allowed directory and send JSON-RPC commands via stdin:

# Specify allowed directory go run ./cmd/mcp-file-tools /path/to/project

Example commands (paste into terminal):

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}} {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"list_directory","arguments":{"path":"/path/to/project","pattern":"*.go"}}} {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"read_text_file","arguments":{"path":"/path/to/project/main.pas","encoding":"cp1251"}}} {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":4,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"detect_encoding","arguments":{"path":"/path/to/project/file.txt"}}}

License

GPL-3.0 - see LICENSE

mcp-file-tools