sublime-mcp
MCP server for Sublime Text 4 — lets AI agents read and control a running editor.
What it is
sublime-mcp is a Sublime Text plugin that speaks the Model Context Protocol. An agent connects to it over HTTP and works with the editor you already have open: it reads files, edits text, runs commands, and — on Windows — sees the screen and answers dialogs.
It runs inside Sublime's own plugin host, so there is no automation layer in between and no helper process to keep alive. Everything an agent does goes through Sublime's API, which means it sees the same tabs, selections, panels and menus you do.
Related MCP server: Bismuth_MCP_Godot
Table of contents
Install
1. Install the plugin
The repository root is the Sublime package. Clone it and link it into Sublime's Packages directory as sublime-mcp, then restart Sublime so the plugin loads.
:: Windows
mklink /J "%APPDATA%\Sublime Text\Packages\sublime-mcp" "C:\path\to\sublime-mcp"
# macOS
ln -s "$(pwd)" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text/Packages/sublime-mcp"
# Linux
ln -s "$(pwd)" "$HOME/.config/sublime-text/Packages/sublime-mcp"
The server starts with Sublime. MCP Commander: Server Status in the Command Palette starts, stops and reports it.
2. Point your agent at it
{ "mcpServers": { "sublime-mcp": { "type": "http", "url": "http://127.0.0.1:9502/mcp" } } }
On macOS and Linux the port is 9503. Clients that predate streamable HTTP can use "type": "sse" with http://127.0.0.1:9502/sse.
A client that can only launch a command needs one of the bundled proxies:
cd packages/node-proxy && npm install . && npx sublime-mcp # Node
cd packages/python-proxy && pip install . && sublime-mcp # Python
3. Check the connection
It reports the HTTP bridge, the MCP handshake and the tool catalog. MCP Commander: Connection Doctor shows the server's side of the same picture.
Usage
A connected agent gets eight tools immediately — get_help, discover_tools, batch, get_active_file, project_search, save_file, str_replace_based_edit_tool and ui_screenshot — and finds everything else through discover_tools. That catalog covers editing and navigation, tabs and windows, Sublime commands by id, project state, quick panels and menus, the console, and the regions and phantoms a package drew. batch runs several of them in one request.
discover_tools(query="screenshot")
batch(calls=[{tool: "get_sheets", args: {}}, {tool: "get_console", args: {lines: 20}}])
If you are writing the agent side, read AGENT_GUIDE.md first: it is the order the tools should be used in, including the traps. The same guidance ships as a skill in skills/sublime-mcp; skills/package-skill-generator turns a one-off investigation of any other Sublime package — a debugger, a language server — into a small reusable skill instead of another MCP server.
Configuration
Settings live in MCP Commander.sublime-settings (Preferences › Package Settings › MCP Commander).
what | Windows | macOS / Linux | key |
MCP streamable HTTP /mcp and legacy SSE /sse | 9502 | 9503 | mcp_port
|
HTTP bridge, used by the bundled proxies | 9500 | 9501 | http_port
|
The proxies read SUBLIME_MCP_BASE (for example http://127.0.0.1:9500) and SUBLIME_MCP_TOKEN when those differ from the defaults.
Security
Both servers listen on 127.0.0.1 and do not authenticate by default. One tool, eval_python, runs arbitrary code in Sublime's process, so an agent connected here can do anything you can do with that editor. Treat the connection as you would your own login session.
These settings change that posture:
auth_token — require Authorization: Bearer <token> on every request. This is the only control that helps against another process, or another user, on the same machine. Use a long random value; for a proxy, set the same value as SUBLIME_MCP_TOKEN.
allow_lan_access — bind 0.0.0.0 so other devices can connect. Still unauthenticated unless auth_token is set. Use it only for a specific client that cannot reach 127.0.0.1, such as WSL without localhost forwarding.
disabled_tools — refuse and hide named tools, for example ["eval_python", "run_command"].
Browsers are refused on the default configuration: the tool endpoints send no Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and with no token set they reject any request whose Origin or Host names something other than loopback. Command-line and desktop clients send no Origin and are unaffected. None of this stops a process already running as you; auth_token is the answer to that.
Requirements
Sublime Text 4 (developed against build 4215). Sublime Text 3 is not supported.
Windows, macOS or Linux. The ui_* and native-dialog tools are Windows only and are hidden elsewhere.
Python 3.8 or newer in Sublime's plugin host. Panels opened by older Python 3.3 packages are reachable with "install_py33_helper": true (off by default).
Maintainers
Donald Chitester.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome at dpc00/sublime-commander. For a bug, the useful report is the tool call, what you expected, and what came back — plus the relevant lines from View > Show Console.
Changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md with the reason and how the fix was verified.
License
MIT © Donald Chitester. See LICENSE.
