MCPBox

MCPBox is a Go-based control plane for MCP servers. It lets you group local and remote MCP backends by project, inspect what they expose, monitor traffic, and publish a single project URL for AI clients such as Claude, Cursor, Codex, LM Studio, and local Ollama-based workflows.

Why MCPBox

Managing several MCP servers quickly turns into a mix of JSON snippets, terminal tabs, and half-documented local setup. MCPBox gives you one embedded UI and one local binary for the operational side of that work.

Key capabilities:

  • Project-based organization for local stdio and remote HTTP streaming MCP servers
  • One project MCP endpoint at /mcp/{project_token} that aggregates all enabled servers in the project
  • Built-in Knowledge Base / RAG collections with local indexing for code, text, CSV, XLSX, DOCX, PPTX, and text-based PDF
  • Live inspection of tools, resources, prompts, and nearby README files for local stdio servers
  • Health checks on create, update, manual check, and local server start
  • Audit log for MCP traffic and control actions
  • Project pause/resume and per-server enable/disable controls
  • Embedded Market / Catalog flow for syncing, installing, verifying, and uninstalling integrations
  • One-click Ollama and llama.cpp launchers for local MCP testing
  • Single-binary deployment with embedded React UI and local SQLite storage

Quick Start

  1. Download the binary for your OS from the latest release, or build from source.
  2. Run MCPBox.
  3. Open http://127.0.0.1:38180/ if the browser does not open automatically.
  4. Create a project.
  5. Add local stdio servers or remote HTTP streaming servers.
  6. Copy the project endpoint from the UI and connect your AI client to /mcp/{project_token}.

For local Ollama testing:

  1. Make sure ollama is installed.
  2. Open a project that has at least one enabled MCP server.
  3. Choose a local Ollama model in the UI.
  4. Click Launch Ollama.

For LM Studio:

  1. Open a project that has at least one enabled MCP server or connected knowledge base.
  2. Click Launch Project.
  3. Choose Add to LM Studio.
  4. Confirm the deeplink in LM Studio when your OS opens it.

For local llama.cpp Web UI testing:

  1. Make sure llama-server is installed and available in PATH.
  2. Set MCPBOX_LLAMACPP_MODEL or choose a local .gguf model in the launch dialog.
  3. Open a project with an enabled MCP server or connected knowledge base.
  4. Click Launch Project and choose the llama.cpp action.
  5. MCPBox starts llama-server, applies the project prompt as a system prompt, and opens the Web UI.

Build From Source

Requirements:

  • Go 1.26+
  • Node.js and npm

Build steps:

npm --prefix html install
npm --prefix html run build
go build -o MCPBox .

Run from source:

go run .

Default port: 38180

Documentation

Notes

  • MCPBox uses a local SQLite database by default.
  • The current Knowledge Base / RAG implementation uses local full-text indexing with Bleve. It does not build or require embedding indexes at this stage.
  • The Docker runtime support in 1.2.1 is intentionally an MVP. Advanced container features such as compose-style orchestration, custom networks, and volume presets are not fully implemented yet.
  • The go_install package flow in 1.2.2 assumes the target integration can be installed through go install module/path@version and exposed through a concrete binary entry point.
  • Secret masking is applied in the UI and catalog install flow. Existing manually configured servers that still pass secrets directly in command arguments should be migrated to environment variables for full process-list safety.
  • The Ollama launcher is shown only when ollama is installed on the machine.
  • The llama.cpp launcher requires llama-server; project prompts are passed through --system-prompt-file and are also exposed through MCP prompts/list as project_prompt.
  • Local server inspection is available for stdio servers only.