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ginkida

portainer-mcp

by ginkida

Portainer MCP Server

License: MIT Python 3.10+ MCP PyPI

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that gives AI assistants — Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and others — 41 tools to manage Portainer container environments: deploy and update stacks, manage containers/images/volumes/networks, exec commands, analyze logs, debug Laravel apps, and inspect endpoints — all through natural language.

For LLM agents: This server connects via stdio transport. Every tool returns JSON. All mutating operations are audit-logged. Credentials are passed via environment variables, never hardcoded.


Why Use This

  • Natural language DevOps — Ask your AI assistant to deploy a stack, check container logs, or pull an image.

  • Swarm-aware — Automatically detects Docker Swarm clusters and uses the correct API.

  • Safe by default — Input validation, path traversal protection, sensitive field filtering, and force-remove disabled by default.

  • Works everywhere — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Continue.dev.


Quick Start

1. Install

pip install portainer-mcp

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/ginkida/portainer-mcp.git
cd portainer-mcp
pip install -e .

2. Configure your AI client

Pick your client below, paste the config, and replace the placeholder values with your Portainer credentials.


Client Configuration

Claude Desktop

File: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portainer": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "portainer_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PORTAINER_URL": "https://your-portainer:9443",
        "PORTAINER_USERNAME": "admin",
        "PORTAINER_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

File: .mcp.json in your project root (project-scope) or ~/.claude.json (user-scope)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portainer": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "portainer_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PORTAINER_URL": "https://your-portainer:9443",
        "PORTAINER_USERNAME": "admin",
        "PORTAINER_PASSWORD": "${PORTAINER_PASSWORD}",
        "PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or via CLI:

claude mcp add portainer -- python3 -m portainer_mcp.server

Cursor

File: ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (project)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portainer": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "portainer_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PORTAINER_URL": "https://your-portainer:9443",
        "PORTAINER_USERNAME": "admin",
        "PORTAINER_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

File: ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portainer": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "portainer_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PORTAINER_URL": "https://your-portainer:9443",
        "PORTAINER_USERNAME": "admin",
        "PORTAINER_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

VS Code (GitHub Copilot)

File: .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace

{
  "servers": {
    "portainer": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "portainer_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PORTAINER_URL": "${input:portainer-url}",
        "PORTAINER_USERNAME": "${input:portainer-username}",
        "PORTAINER_PASSWORD": "${input:portainer-password}",
        "PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  },
  "inputs": [
    { "type": "promptString", "id": "portainer-url", "description": "Portainer base URL" },
    { "type": "promptString", "id": "portainer-username", "description": "Portainer username" },
    { "type": "promptString", "id": "portainer-password", "description": "Portainer password", "password": true }
  ]
}

Continue.dev

File: ~/.continue/config.yaml or .continue/config.yaml

mcpServers:
  - name: portainer
    type: stdio
    command: python3
    args:
      - -m
      - portainer_mcp.server
    env:
      PORTAINER_URL: "https://your-portainer:9443"
      PORTAINER_USERNAME: "admin"
      PORTAINER_PASSWORD: "your-password"
      PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL: "false"

Environment Variables

Variable

Required

Default

Description

PORTAINER_URL

Yes

Portainer base URL (e.g. https://portainer.example.com:9443)

PORTAINER_USERNAME

Yes

Portainer username

PORTAINER_PASSWORD

Yes

Portainer password

PORTAINER_DEFAULT_ENDPOINT

No

1

Default endpoint ID for container/image/stack operations

PORTAINER_VERIFY_SSL

No

true

Set to false for self-signed certificates


Tools

All 41 tools are listed below with their parameters and descriptions. Every tool returns JSON.

Authentication

Tool

Description

portainer_status()

Check connection and authentication status. Returns version and instance ID.

Endpoints (Environments)

Tool

Description

portainer_endpoints_list()

List all environments. Returns id, name, type, url, status.

portainer_endpoint_inspect(endpoint_id)

Get endpoint details (sensitive fields like TLS certs are filtered).

Stacks

Tool

Description

portainer_stacks_list()

List all stacks with id, name, type, status, endpoint_id.

portainer_stack_inspect(stack_id)

Get stack details including the docker-compose file content.

portainer_stack_deploy(name, compose_content, endpoint_id?)

Deploy a new stack. Auto-detects Swarm vs standalone.

portainer_stack_update(stack_id, compose_content?, endpoint_id?)

Update a stack. Omit compose_content to redeploy existing.

portainer_stack_delete(stack_id)

Delete a stack.

portainer_stack_start(stack_id)

Start a stopped stack.

portainer_stack_stop(stack_id)

Stop a running stack.

Containers

Tool

Description

portainer_containers_list(endpoint_id?, show_all?)

List containers. Set show_all=true to include stopped.

portainer_container_inspect(container_id, endpoint_id?)

Get detailed container info.

portainer_container_start(container_id, endpoint_id?)

Start a stopped container.

portainer_container_stop(container_id, endpoint_id?)

Stop a running container.

portainer_container_restart(container_id, endpoint_id?)

Restart a container.

portainer_container_remove(container_id, force?, endpoint_id?)

Remove a container. force defaults to false.

portainer_container_logs(container_id, tail?, endpoint_id?)

Get container logs. tail defaults to 100 (max 1000).

portainer_container_logs_grep(container_id, pattern, tail?, context_lines?, endpoint_id?)

Server-side regex over logs. Returns only matching lines (with optional context) — saves bandwidth on noisy logs.

portainer_container_stats(container_id, endpoint_id?)

Point-in-time CPU%, memory, network and block I/O stats (not a stream).

portainer_container_exec(container_id, command, workdir?, user?, endpoint_id?)

Run a shell command inside a running container and return its stdout/stderr + exit code. Audit-logged.

portainer_stack_logs_errors(stack_name, tail?, endpoint_id?)

Concurrent scan of every running container in a stack for HTTP 4xx/5xx, exceptions, fatal/critical levels, panics, OOM, PHP errors, etc.

portainer_laravel_errors(stack_name, tail?, endpoint_id?)

Read /var/www/app/storage/logs/laravel.log inside each container of a stack and return production.ERROR/CRITICAL/EMERGENCY entries — the actual exception behind a 500.

portainer_laravel_tinker(stack_name, code, endpoint_id?)

Execute PHP via php artisan tinker --execute=... in the first running {stack}_backend.* container. Code capped at 4096 chars. Audit-logged.

Images

Tool

Description

portainer_images_list(endpoint_id?)

List images with tags and sizes.

portainer_image_inspect(image_id, endpoint_id?)

Get detailed image info. Accepts name:tag or name@sha256:digest.

portainer_image_pull(image_name, tag?, registry_auth?, endpoint_id?)

Pull an image. tag defaults to "latest". registry_auth is an optional base64-encoded JSON {"username":..,"password":..,"serveraddress":..} forwarded as X-Registry-Auth — required for private registries. The pull-progress stream is parsed and any errorDetail is surfaced as a tool error (the previous version returned success regardless).

portainer_image_remove(image_id, endpoint_id?)

Remove an image.

Volumes

Tool

Description

portainer_volumes_list(endpoint_id?)

List Docker volumes.

portainer_volume_inspect(volume_name, endpoint_id?)

Get detailed volume info.

portainer_volume_create(name, driver?, labels?, endpoint_id?)

Create a volume. driver defaults to "local".

portainer_volume_remove(volume_name, force?, endpoint_id?)

Remove a volume. force defaults to false.

Networks

Tool

Description

portainer_networks_list(endpoint_id?)

List Docker networks with driver, scope and attached container count.

portainer_network_inspect(network_id, endpoint_id?)

Get detailed network info.

portainer_network_create(name, driver?, internal?, labels?, endpoint_id?)

Create a network. driver defaults to "bridge" (use "overlay" for Swarm).

portainer_network_remove(network_id, endpoint_id?)

Remove a network.

portainer_network_connect(network_id, container_id, endpoint_id?)

Attach a container to a network.

portainer_network_disconnect(network_id, container_id, force?, endpoint_id?)

Detach a container from a network.

System

Tool

Description

portainer_docker_info(endpoint_id?)

OS, CPU, memory, container/image counts, swarm state.

portainer_docker_disk_usage(endpoint_id?)

Per-category disk usage (containers, images, volumes, build cache) with reclaimable size.

Users

Tool

Description

portainer_users_list()

List all Portainer users with id, username, role.

portainer_user_inspect(user_id)

Get user details. Sensitive fields (password hash, TFA material, tokens) are filtered out.


Example Workflows

Deploy a new service:

"Deploy a stack called 'redis' with Redis 7 on port 6379"

The agent will call portainer_stack_deploy(name="redis", compose_content="...") with the generated compose YAML.

Debug a failing container:

"Why is the nginx container crashing?"

The agent will call portainer_containers_list() to find the container, then portainer_container_logs(container_id) to inspect the logs.

Update an existing stack:

"Update the arena-etl stack to use the new image tag v2.1"

The agent will call portainer_stack_inspect(stack_id) to get the current compose file, modify the image tag, then portainer_stack_update(stack_id, compose_content).


Security

  • JWT auth with proactive refresh (7h TTL, Portainer default is 8h), asyncio.Lock-guarded re-authentication for safe concurrent use, and 401/403-CSRF retry fallback.

  • CSRF handling for Portainer 2.39+ — Referer + X-CSRF-Token are sent only on mutating methods; CSRF token is harvested from X-CSRF-Token response headers and refreshed automatically.

  • SSL verification enabled by default. Only disable for self-signed certificates.

  • Input validation — container IDs, image references (incl. digests), stack names, volume/network names are regex-validated before any API call. Path traversal (..) is blocked.

  • Sensitive field filteringendpoint_inspect strips TLS certificates, Azure credentials and security settings; user_inspect whitelists safe fields and hides password/TFA material.

  • Audit logging — every mutating operation (deploy, delete, remove, pull, start, stop, exec, tinker) is logged to stderr with parameters.

  • No hardcoded credentials — all secrets come from environment variables. Optional X-Registry-Auth for private-registry image pulls is passed in via parameter, never persisted.

  • Container removalforce defaults to false to prevent accidental deletion of running containers.

  • Log/exec size limits — output is capped at 100K characters to prevent memory exhaustion.


Development

git clone https://github.com/ginkida/portainer-mcp.git
cd portainer-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Run locally:

export PORTAINER_URL=https://your-portainer:9443
export PORTAINER_USERNAME=admin
export PORTAINER_PASSWORD=your-password
python3 -m portainer_mcp.server

Lint and type-check:

ruff check src/
mypy src/

Requirements

  • Python 3.10+

  • A running Portainer instance (CE or Business Edition)

  • Portainer API access (default port 9443)

License

MIT

Install Server
A
license - permissive license
A
quality
B
maintenance

Maintenance

Maintainers
Response time
5dRelease cycle
4Releases (12mo)

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