Bambu Studio MCP · CLI first

Create a saved 3MF from meshes, edit private revisions, and slice with your installed Bambu Studio.

This independent community project invokes the official native Bambu Studio CLI. It provides a small Bash launcher and an optional Python CLI, MCP server and REST service. It does not connect to a printer or open the slicer GUI.

Experimental Bambu implementation. The project keeps the Snapmaker wrapper's organization, public API declarations and compatibility types. Its document, engine, service, persistence, settings, schema-extraction and transport execution have been reimplemented for Bambu. See implementation and validation scope. The required native suite covers ten setting effects, a regional modifier, creation, layout, adaptive profiles and one real MCP workflow across all 35 tools. That workflow does not cover all modes, values, printers or all 679 settings.

Baseline and requirements

Basic macOS feasibility has been observed for a synthetic saved-3MF slice and native mesh-to-3MF creation. Those observations do not certify all editing tools, all settings, Linux/Windows native execution, GUI equivalence or physical prints. Use the validation workflow and limits for the exact checks.

The MCP rejects generic or foreign 3MF files without the native Bambu application marker before slicing or layout. The Bambu importer otherwise treats these files as geometry and can discard their saved settings. The wrapper preserves the original metadata rather than relabeling a foreign project.

The native binary is not included in the Python package. Discovery reads known installation locations; binding is a separate explicit action. The wrapper never downloads, installs or silently upgrades the engine. A declared source commit is operator-supplied provenance; executable/resource hashes are measured locally.

Related MCP server: Polar Cloud MCP

Slice once

Install Bambu Studio, save a complete native Bambu Studio project, and run:

git clone https://github.com/MoraesGil/bambu-studio-mcp.git
cd bambu-studio-mcp
bash bin/bambu-slice.sh /absolute/project.3mf 1 /absolute/plate1.gcode

This route needs Bash and the installed app; it does not require Python or a server. Plate numbers start at 1. The destination directory must exist and the output filename must be new. Publication uses an exclusive hard link, so use a filesystem that supports hard links, such as APFS. For an exFAT/FAT destination, slice on a supported volume and copy the completed file afterward.

The default app is /Applications/BambuStudio.app. Select another bundle with BAMBU_APP="/absolute/BambuStudio.app". Temporary source/profile files are private and removed on exit. Native stdout/stderr and failure status pass through.

Use the optional fourth argument --allow-newer-file only after checking the file's compatibility. It bypasses the native version gate; it does not add support for unknown features. The Bash launcher uses strict checking by default.

Discover and bind the Python service

uv sync --frozen
uv run bambu-studio-mcp discover

uv run bambu-studio-mcp --engine /absolute/runtime/engine.json bind-engine \
  --binary /Applications/BambuStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/BambuStudio \
  --resources /Applications/BambuStudio.app/Contents/Resources \
  --commit 926a7192574bcb9b3a732e1ec59a46d79cb45466

Discovery reports installations without binding them. Select the build whose source identity you have verified; do not assign the example commit to another binary. Keep the executable in its complete app bundle. Changed engine assets require an explicit new binding and validation.

Create from meshes, then slice

Select printer, process and material presets explicitly. Mesh files alone do not identify a printer or material. For a synthetic X1 Carbon example:

uv run bambu-studio-mcp --engine /absolute/runtime/engine.json \
  --artifacts /absolute/artifacts create /absolute/part.stl \
  --printer "Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 0.4 nozzle" \
  --process "0.20mm Standard @BBL X1C" \
  --filament "Generic PLA"

Creation accepts STL/OBJ meshes; open an existing 3MF with load_model. Repeat --filament for additional supplied material presets. The native CLI creates a private saved 3MF from copied meshes and temporary preset exports. The source meshes and installed presets remain read-only. Inspect the returned project, then use MCP slice_project or slice its returned path:

uv run bambu-studio-mcp --engine /absolute/runtime/engine.json \
  --artifacts /absolute/artifacts slice /absolute/created-project.3mf --plate 1

Replace the last input path with the actual path returned by create.

flowchart LR
  A[Meshes and explicit presets] --> B[Native project creation]
  B --> C[Private saved 3MF]
  D[Existing saved 3MF] --> C
  C --> E[Inspect and edit a revision]
  E --> F[Native slice]
  F --> G[G-code and provenance]

MCP and REST

Start MCP over stdio:

uv run bambu-studio-mcp --engine /absolute/runtime/engine.json \
  --artifacts /absolute/artifacts serve --no-update-check

The service exposes project creation, inspection, revision editing, presets, slicing and bounded output reads. Use create_project or load_model, inspect actual object/material IDs, apply changes with the latest revision SHA, and re-slice. Installed presets and source files are preserved.

For shared clients, authenticated Streamable HTTP exposes /mcp and REST /api/v1 on one listener. REST remains focused on slicing saved projects and reading retained artifacts; project creation/editing use MCP or the Python API. Client setup and examples are in usage, macOS setup and REST. Linux/Docker is an explicitly unvalidated native deployment recipe.

The adaptive-layer generator uses the pinned Bambu source algorithm. Native regressions inspect actual layer Z spacing, explicit height ranges and reset. The wrapper overlays explicit ranges after generation. Bambu-native ordinal profile storage replaces the former wrapper-specific root-ID output; older root-ID profiles remain readable. See validation limits.

Development and provenance

Follow contribution-workflow.md. Run the public contract suite separately from required native integration:

uv sync --frozen --extra test
uv run --frozen --extra test mypy
uv run --frozen --extra test pytest tests -q
bash -n bin/bambu-slice.sh

This repository starts as a separate adaptation of MoraesGil/snapmaker-orca-mcp. No shared slicer-mcp-core package has been extracted. See architecture, attribution and extraction provenance.

GNU AGPLv3 license