Docker MCP server

An MCP server for managing Docker with natural language!

What can it do?

• Compose containers with natural language
• Introspect & debug running containers
• Manage persistent data with Docker volumes

Who is this for?

• Server administrators: connect to remote Docker engines for e.g. managing a public-facing website.
• Tinkerers: run containers locally and experiment with open-source apps supporting Docker.
• AI enthusiasts: push the limits of that an LLM is capable of!

Demo

A quick demo showing a WordPress deployment using natural language.

Quickstart# Install\n\n#### Claude Desktop

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Install from PyPi with uv. If you don't have uv installed, follow the installation instructions for your system.

Then add the following to your MCP servers file:

"mcpServers": {
  "mcp-server-docker": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [ "mcp-server-docker" ]
  }
}

Install with Docker. Purely for convenience, the server can run in a Docker container. After cloning this repository, build the Docker image:

docker build -t mcp-server-docker .

And then add the following to your MCP servers file:

"mcpServers": {
  "mcp-server-docker": {
    "command": "docker",
    "args": [ "run", "-i", "--rm", "-v", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock", "mcp-server-docker:latest" ]
  }
}

Note that we mount the Docker socket as a volume; this ensures the MCP server can connect to and control the local Docker daemon.

Prompts# docker_compose

Use natural language to compose containers. Provide a Project Name, and a description of desired containers, and let the LLM do the rest.

Resources

The server implements a couple resources for every container:

• Stats: CPU, memory, etc. for a container
• Logs: tail some logs from a container

Tools# Containers

• list_containers
• create_container
• run_container
• recreate_container
• start_container
• fetch_container_logs
• stop_container
• remove_container

Images

• list_images
• pull_image
• push_image
• build_image
• remove_image

Networks

• list_networks
• create_network
• remove_network

Volumes

• list_volumes
• create_volume
• remove_volume

Disclaimers# Sensitive Data

DO NOT CONFIGURE CONTAINERS WITH SENSITIVE DATA.

Reviewing Created Containers

Be careful to review the containers that the LLM creates. Docker is not a secure sandbox.

Configuration

This server uses the Python Docker SDK's from_env method. For configuration details, see the documentation.

Connect to Docker over SSH

This MCP server can connect to a remote Docker daemon over SSH.

Development

Prefer using Devbox to configure your development environment.