shutter-mcp

Point Claude, or any MCP client, at a folder of RAW and JPEG files. It can scan the library, break down which cameras and lenses actually got used, find duplicates, flag the shots that are probably blurry, or write a full cull report. It never gets a tool that can touch a file: read-only means read-only, all the way down.

Why this exists: culling tools that touch your shoots ask for a subscription or your client's files on somebody else's cloud. This asks for neither. It reads the metadata and pixels already sitting on your disk and answers in text, not files, and it is deliberately the read-only first step of a bigger local-first project (see Roadmap; the write-capable half is shutter-cull-mcp).

Tools

Every tool is read-only. None of them write, move, rename, or delete a file.

Related MCP server: Docalyze

Install

Requires Python 3.11+.

With uv (recommended):

uv tool install shutter-mcp

With pipx:

pipx install shutter-mcp

From source, for development:

git clone https://github.com/keivanmalhani/shutter-mcp.git
cd shutter-mcp
uv venv
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

shutter-mcp takes one or more --root directories at launch. Every tool call is validated against this allowlist, so the server can only ever see the folders you explicitly grant it.

shutter-mcp --root /path/to/photos --root /path/to/scans

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shutter-mcp": {
      "command": "shutter-mcp",
      "args": ["--root", "/Users/you/Pictures/2026-shoot"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add shutter-mcp -- shutter-mcp --root /Users/you/Pictures/2026-shoot

Security model

• Read-only. No tool writes, moves, renames, or deletes user files. cull_report returns markdown text; it never writes a file.

• Root allowlist. The server only accepts --root directories at launch. Every path argument a tool receives is resolved (Path.resolve, symlinks included) and rejected if it falls outside every allowed root, even if a symlink inside the root points elsewhere.

• No network calls at runtime. Everything happens on your filesystem.

• No image bytes returned. Tools return paths and metadata only, never base64 or raw pixel data.

• No telemetry, no analytics.

Format support

RAW pixel decode (blur scoring and visual dedup on ARW/RAF/etc.) is out of scope for this MVP; EXIF reading works today on both. See Roadmap.

Development

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
uv run pytest

Tests generate their own fixture images with Pillow at run time; no binary fixtures are committed to the repo.

Roadmap

• RAW pixel decode (ARW, RAF, and friends) via rawpy, for blur scoring and visual dedup

• XMP rating/flag writeback so cull decisions show up in Lightroom Classic

• Integration as the agent interface for the local-first photo culling engine

• Publish to PyPI and the MCP registry

Family

shutter-cull is the photo engine and shutter-select the video one. shutter-cull-mcp is the side that does write, with human confirmation and undo. This is the read-only one, and that guarantee is structural rather than a promise in the docs.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.