Skip to main content
Glama

pipen-mcp

A pipen CLI plugin that exposes pipen processes and pipelines as MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools, allowing AI assistants to discover and run bioinformatics pipelines.

Overview

pipen-mcp bridges pipen's process/pipeline ecosystem with AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol. Once installed, any namespace registered via the pipen_cli_run entry point group is automatically discoverable and executable by an MCP-compatible client (e.g., Claude, VS Code Copilot, Cursor).

Installation

pip install pipen-mcp

pipen-mcp requires Python ≥ 3.10 and depends on:

Usage

pipen-mcp adds an mcp subcommand to the pipen CLI:

pipen mcp [--transport {stdio,sse,streamable-http}] [--host HOST] [--port PORT]

Option

Description

Default

--transport

MCP transport (stdio, sse, or streamable-http)

stdio

--host

Host to bind to (SSE / streamable-http only)

127.0.0.1

--port

Port to listen on (SSE / streamable-http only)

8520

stdio (default)

Suitable for direct integration with MCP clients that launch the server as a subprocess:

pipen mcp

SSE

Starts an HTTP server with Server-Sent Events transport:

pipen mcp --transport sse --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8520

Streamable HTTP

Starts an HTTP server with the streamable-HTTP transport:

pipen mcp --transport streamable-http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8520

MCP Tools

The server exposes four tools that support a progressive-disclosure workflow:

Tool

Description

get_namespaces

List all available namespaces. Start here to discover what is installed.

get_processes

List all processes/pipelines available in a namespace.

get_process

Get the full argument schema for a specific process/pipeline.

run_process

Execute a process/pipeline with a list of CLI arguments.

Typical workflow

1. get_namespaces()
   → "delim", "bam", "rnaseq", ...

2. get_processes("delim")
   → RowsBinder (proc): Bind rows of input files
   → ColsBinder (proc): Bind columns of input files

3. get_process("delim", "RowsBinder")
   → Required:
       --in.infiles <list[str]>  Input files
   → Optional:
       --envs.sep <str> (default: '\t')  Separator
       --outdir <str>  Output directory
       ...

4. run_process("delim", "RowsBinder", [
       "--in.infiles", "/tmp/a.csv,/tmp/b.csv",
       "--envs.sep", ",",
       "--outdir", "/tmp/out"
   ])
   → Pipeline output / logs

VS Code / Copilot Integration

Add the server to your MCP configuration (~/.vscode/mcp.json or ~/.vscode-server/data/User/mcp.json):

{
  "servers": {
    "pipen-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "pipen",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Or for SSE:

{
  "servers": {
    "pipen-mcp": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:8520/sse"
    }
  }
}

Authoring a Namespace

Any package can register processes/pipelines with pipen-mcp by declaring a pipen_cli_run entry point:

# pyproject.toml
[project.entry-points."pipen_cli_run"]
myns = "mypackage.ns.myns"

The referenced module should contain Proc subclasses (with an input attribute) or ProcGroup subclasses. Use pipen-annotate to document arguments — annotated fields are exposed in get_process output and used to build the tool schema.

# mypackage/ns/myns.py
"""My namespace — tools for processing text files."""
from pipen import Proc
from pipen_annotate import annotate

@annotate
class MyProc(Proc):
    """Concatenate rows from multiple files.

    Input:
        infiles (list): Input files to concatenate

    Envs:
        sep (str): Column separator. Default: ","
    """
    input = "infiles:files"
    output = "outfile:file:{{in.infiles[0] | stem}}_concat.tsv"
    script = "..."

License

MIT

A
license - permissive license
-
quality - not tested
C
maintenance

Resources

Unclaimed servers have limited discoverability.

Looking for Admin?

If you are the server author, to access and configure the admin panel.

Latest Blog Posts

MCP directory API

We provide all the information about MCP servers via our MCP API.

curl -X GET 'https://glama.ai/api/mcp/v1/servers/pwwang/pipen-mcp'

If you have feedback or need assistance with the MCP directory API, please join our Discord server