mcp-synology

Ask your AI assistant about your Synology NAS. This is an MCP server that lets Claude (or any MCP client) check your NAS's health, storage, Cloud Sync progress, scheduled tasks, logs and files, in plain language.

"Is my cloud sync finished? How long is left?" "Did last night's backup task succeed?" "Any disk or RAID warnings this month?" "Who failed to log in over SSH last week?" "What's in /media/film?"

It is read-only by default. Actions that change anything are switched off unless you turn them on.

Requirements

• A Synology NAS running DSM 7. Developed and tested against DSM 7.3; other DSM 7 releases are untested.

• uv, which provides uvx and fetches Python and everything else automatically.

• A DSM user account. See Choosing an account.

Related MCP server: Synology_MCP

Setup

You need four details: your NAS's address, the DSM port, and a username and password.

The port is the one you use to open DSM in a browser: 5001 for HTTPS by default, or 5000 for HTTP. If you changed it, it's under Control Panel → Login Portal → DSM.

Claude Code

claude mcp add synology \
  -e SYNOLOGY_HOST=192.168.1.10 \
  -e SYNOLOGY_PORT=5001 \
  -e SYNOLOGY_USER=your-user \
  -e SYNOLOGY_PASSWORD='your-password' \
  -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/danjam/mcp-synology mcp-synology

Add -s user to make it available in every project. Run /mcp inside Claude Code to check that it connected.

Claude Code, per project (.mcp.json)

To share the server with everyone working in a project, put a .mcp.json file in the project root. Claude Code expands ${VAR} from your environment, so credentials stay out of the file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "synology": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/danjam/mcp-synology", "mcp-synology"],
      "env": {
        "SYNOLOGY_HOST": "192.168.1.10",
        "SYNOLOGY_PORT": "5001",
        "SYNOLOGY_PERMISSION": "read",
        "SYNOLOGY_USER": "${SYNOLOGY_USER}",
        "SYNOLOGY_PASSWORD": "${SYNOLOGY_PASSWORD}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Set SYNOLOGY_USER and SYNOLOGY_PASSWORD in your shell profile. Claude Code asks you to approve a project's servers the first time.

Claude Desktop and other MCP clients

Add this to your client's MCP configuration (for Claude Desktop: Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "synology": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/danjam/mcp-synology", "mcp-synology"],
      "env": {
        "SYNOLOGY_HOST": "192.168.1.10",
        "SYNOLOGY_PORT": "5001",
        "SYNOLOGY_USER": "your-user",
        "SYNOLOGY_PASSWORD": "your-password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client after saving.

Self-signed certificate

If your NAS uses DSM's default self-signed certificate rather than one from a certificate authority, connecting fails with a certificate verification error. Add:

SYNOLOGY_VERIFY_SSL=0

This skips the certificate check. Only do that on a network you trust.

Settings

Permissions

Tools above your chosen level are hidden from the assistant entirely, so it can't call them by mistake. A destructive level is reserved for future tools that delete data or shut the NAS down. It needs both SYNOLOGY_PERMISSION=destructive and SYNOLOGY_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE=1, and no tools use it yet.

Choosing an account

• Task Scheduler, Log Center and notifications show system-wide information, including tasks that run as root. They have been tested only with an account in the administrators group. With a regular account they may fail or show less.

• Two-factor authentication isn't supported. An account with 2FA enabled can't log in. If you use 2FA on your own account, create a separate account for the assistant.

• A dedicated account also makes the assistant's sign-ins easy to tell apart from yours in DSM's connection log.

What it can see

Times are shown in the NAS's own time zone, with the zone named in each answer.

Troubleshooting

Limitations

• Task Scheduler shows each run's result (success or exit code) but not its output. DSM 7.3 doesn't expose that through its API.

• Filtering logs by severity reads up to 20,000 entries per request, so rare entries in a very large log may take several requests to reach.

• Cloud Sync has no per-connection speed figure: DSM reports each file's speed, which doesn't add up to a reliable total. Network traffic for the whole NAS is under System.

• DSM doesn't report whether a disk is spun down right now. You can see when disks last woke up, and the hibernation settings.

• The hibernation debug log itself isn't readable through DSM's API, only whether debug mode is on.

• Only one NAS per server entry. Add another entry with a different name for a second NAS.

Acknowledgements

Built on synology-api and the official MCP Python SDK.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.