microduck-mcp 🦆 — by MicroduckHub

The universal agent interface for the Pollen Robotics Microduck.

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets any AI agent — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini CLI, smolagents — drive a Microduck: walk it, sit it, make it pick things up, read its health, and stop it.

Part of MicroduckHub.

Works today with no robot: a mock transport for instant canned state, and a simulator — CPU MuJoCo running Pollen's official pretrained ONNX policies — so agents can walk, sit, kick and look at a physically simulated duck before yours ships.

Quick start

npm install
npm run build

# Mock duck (default — no hardware needed)
npm start

# Simulated duck: CPU MuJoCo + official ONNX policies (one-time setup ~1 min)
sim/setup.sh            # needs uv (https://docs.astral.sh/uv/); vendors ~30 MB of assets
DUCK_TRANSPORT=sim npm start

# Real duck over ssh
DUCK_TRANSPORT=ssh DUCK_HOST=duck@microduck.local npm start

# On the robot itself
DUCK_TRANSPORT=unix npm start

Try it without a client

npm test                         # safety layer, mock, sim-transport contract tests
npm run demo                     # health → walk → monitor → camera → quack → stop (mock)
DUCK_TRANSPORT=sim npm run demo  # same, in MuJoCo; frames land in demo-out/

Claude Desktop / Claude Code config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "microduck": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/microduck-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": { "DUCK_TRANSPORT": "mock" }
    }
  }
}

If Claude Desktop runs on Windows and this repo lives in WSL, use "command": "wsl.exe", "args": ["-e", "/abs/path/to/node", "/home/you/microduck-mcp/dist/index.js"]. Or for Claude Code: claude mcp add microduck -e DUCK_TRANSPORT=mock -- node /path/to/dist/index.js.

Related MCP server: unitree-sdk2-mcp

Tools

Safety

robotd on the robot holds the only write handle to the motor bus and enforces joint clamps, fall→limp, and an intent deadman. This server adds its own layer on top — velocity caps, a 15% battery floor for motion, rate limiting — because an agent-agnostic tool can't assume the calling model is careful. duck_stop is always available.

Transports

All four sit behind one DuckTransport interface, so the tools — and the safety layer — are identical whether the duck is simulated or real.

Sim fidelity note: the reference MuJoCo scene under-tracks small velocity commands (verified identical to upstream's own infer_policy.py). Expect ~0.08 m/s at the 0.25 m/s cap and weak yaw. It walks, sits, stands, kicks and rolls; it just isn't a speed benchmark.

Ecosystem

• MicroduckHub — DuckHub, the community policy browser this server will back once upstream's M8 model channel ships.

• awesome-microduck — the curated ecosystem list.

Not an official project

Community project — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Pollen Robotics or Hugging Face. Microduck is their product; this is an independent client for it, and product names and logos belong to their respective owners.

Status

Pre-hardware. Every transport speaks upstream's published wire protocol (duck-ipc-proto, see src/transport/protocol.ts); the sim path is validated end to end, the unix/ssh paths against a fake daemon only — first contact with a real duck is ~Dec 2026.

Licensed under Apache-2.0 (see LICENSE); upstream robot software is Apache 2.0 too.