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Provides tools for reading, writing, and subscribing to serial ports, enabling interaction with Arduino boards and other serial devices.

Serial MCP Server

GitHub Release crates.io Rust License

Serial monitors are something agents can't work with well natively. serial-mcp fixes this by giving agents powerful tools for reading, writing and subscribing to serial ports.

Non-blocking reads with timeouts and pattern matching, background RX streaming, and full line control (DTR/RTS, BREAK, flow control) — so Claude, Codex, or any MCP client can flash, reset, and talk to your board without freezing the session.

MCP 2025-11-25 compliant · resource change notifications · port allowlist · stdio + HTTP transports

What It Does

Exposes serial ports as MCP tools so agents like Claude can interact with embedded devices, Arduino boards, STM32 microcontrollers, and any UART/USB-serial hardware — all through natural language.

12 tools — list_ports, list_connections, open, close, read, write, flush, set_dtr_rts, set_flow_control, send_break, subscribe, unsubscribe
3 resources — serial://ports, serial://connections, serial://connections/{id}
2 prompt templates — diagnose_port, interactive_terminal

Related MCP server: serial-mcp

Install

Linux

VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/qarnet/serial-mcp/releases/latest | grep -oP '"tag_name": "\K[^"]+')
curl -L "https://github.com/qarnet/serial-mcp/releases/download/${VERSION}/serial-mcp-${VERSION#v}-x86_64-linux" \
  -o serial-mcp && chmod +x serial-mcp && sudo mv serial-mcp /usr/local/bin/

Add user to dialout group for port access: sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

macOS

VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/qarnet/serial-mcp/releases/latest | grep -oP '"tag_name": "\K[^"]+')
ARCH=aarch64-macos   # Intel: x86_64-macos
curl -L "https://github.com/qarnet/serial-mcp/releases/download/${VERSION}/serial-mcp-${VERSION#v}-${ARCH}" \
  -o serial-mcp && chmod +x serial-mcp && sudo mv serial-mcp /usr/local/bin/

Windows

Download serial-mcp-{VERSION}-x86_64-windows.exe from the latest release and place it on your PATH.

Via cargo (all platforms)

cargo install serial-mcp

Via Nix

nix profile install github:qarnet/serial-mcp

Wire Up Your Agent

→ Agent configuration guide — Claude Code CLI, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Zed, opencode, HTTP transport

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "serial": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "serial-mcp",
      "args": ["--allowlist=/dev/ttyACM*,/dev/ttyUSB*"]
    }
  }
}

Options

serial-mcp [OPTIONS]

  --transport <stdio|http>   Transport to use (default: stdio)
  --allowlist <patterns>     Comma-separated glob patterns for allowed ports
  --bind <addr>              HTTP bind address (default: 127.0.0.1:8000)
  -h, --help                 Print help

  RUST_LOG                   Log level env var (error/warn/info/debug/trace)

Transports

Mode	How to activate	Use case
stdio	default	Desktop agents
HTTP	`--transport=http`	Remote / headless

Example Agent Flow

1. list_ports → ["/dev/ttyUSB0", "/dev/ttyACM0"]
2. open(port="/dev/ttyACM0", name="board-uart", baud_rate=115200) → { connection_id: "9f...", name: "board-uart" }
3. list_connections() → [{ connection_id: "9f...", name: "board-uart", port: "/dev/ttyACM0" }]
4. set_dtr_rts(id, dtr=false, rts=false)  # Arduino reset
   set_dtr_rts(id, dtr=true,  rts=true)
5. read(id, match={ pattern: "OK>" }, timeout_ms=3000)  # pattern match in RX data
6. write(id, data="status\r\n")
7. close(id)

Development

cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --all -- --check

# Hardware tests (requires TX-RX loopback device)
SERIAL_MCP_TEST_PORT=/dev/ttyACM0 cargo test --test hardware_loopback -- --ignored

# XIAO BLE firmware validation (requires dedicated serial-mcp test firmware)
SERIAL_MCP_XIAO_PORT=/dev/ttyACM0 cargo test --test xiao_ble_validation -- --ignored --test-threads=1

Be sure to ask your agent to give honest feedback on the tool after they finish using it. Always looking for ways to improve serial-mcp :)

Documentation

MCP Registry

Available on the MCP Registry as:

mcp-name: io.github.qarnet/serial-mcp

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

serial-mcp