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wslgate

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wslgate

The bridge AI agents on Windows need to reach WSL — MCP server + CLI in one package.

Agents like Claude Code run on Windows, but the code lives in WSL. The maintainers know it: anthropics/claude-code#3396 ("execute commands in WSL instead of Windows") has been one of the most-upvoted feature requests on that repo. Until every agent ships native WSL support, wslgate gives any MCP-compatible client the same capability — and gives you a CLI for the same operations by hand.

Tools (MCP)

Tool

Description

wsl_exec

run a bash command in WSL, get stdout/stderr/exit code

wsl_read_file

read a file (accepts C:\... or /mnt/c/...)

wsl_write_file

write a file (base64-safe, no quoting bugs)

wsl_list_dir

list a directory

wsl_path_translate

convert paths C:\ ↔ /mnt/c

wsl_list_distros

list installed distributions

All file/exec tools take an optional distro (Ubuntu, Debian, …) — multi-distro, default distro when omitted. Start with --read-only to disable wsl_exec/wsl_write_file.

Related MCP server: Freya MCP Server

Install / run

npx wslgate-mcp                 # MCP stdio server
npx wslgate-mcp --read-only     # read-only mode

Claude Desktop / Claude Code config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wsl": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "wslgate-mcp"] }
  }
}

Or install globally for the CLI: npm install -g wslgate

wslgate distros
wslgate exec --distro Ubuntu -- "ls -la /mnt/c/Users/me"
wslgate read C:\Users\me\.bashrc
wslgate translate C:\Projects\app
wslgate ls /mnt/c/Windows
echo "hi" | wslgate write /tmp/hello.txt
wslgate mcp --read-only

Honest technical notes

  • Every operation is a wsl.exe --exec bash -lc ... invocation — one process, real exit codes, no \\wsl$ UNC tricks.

  • wsl --list output is UTF-16LE on Windows; wslgate detects and decodes it (BOM or heuristic).

  • Files are written via base64 -d so content with quotes, $ or newlines survives the trip.

  • Paths are validated/quoted with strict single-quote shell escaping before hitting bash.

  • On machines without WSL you get a clear "is WSL installed?" error instead of a stack trace.

Development

npm install
npm test        # vitest: path translation, wsl decoding, MCP protocol (in-memory transport)
npm run build

License

MIT

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Maintenance

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