Unix Manual Server (MCP)

An MCP server that provides Unix command documentation directly within Claude conversations.

Features

Get command documentation: Retrieve help pages, man pages, and usage information for Unix commands
List common commands: Discover available commands on your system, categorized by function
Check command existence: Verify if a specific command is available and get its version information

Installation

Prerequisites

Python 3.13+
Claude Desktop or any MCP-compatible client

Setup

Clone this repository
Install the package:

pip install -e .
# or
uv install -e .

Install the server in Claude Desktop:

mcp install unix_manual_server.py
# uv
uv run mcp install unix_manual_server.py

Usage

Once installed, you can use the server's tools directly in Claude:

Get command documentation

I need help with the grep command. Can you show me the documentation?

List common commands

What Unix commands are available on my system?

Check if a command exists

Is the awk command available on my system?

Development

To test the server locally without installing it in Claude:

mcp dev unix_manual_server.py

Security

The server takes precautions to prevent command injection by:

Validating command names against a regex pattern
Executing commands directly without using shell
Setting timeouts on all command executions
Only checking for documentation, never executing arbitrary commands

Logging

Logs are saved to unix-manual-server.log in the same directory as the script, useful for debugging.

use @modelcontextprotocol/inspector with npx under the hood.

uv run mcp dev unix_manual_server.py

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run unix_manual_server.py

License

MIT

Created with the MCP Python SDK. For more information about MCP, visit modelcontextprotocol.io.