mcp-filesystem

The Filesystem MCP Server exposes a standardized set of tools to interact with and analyze the local file system via the MCP protocol. It supports directory operations (e.g., listing directories and creating directories), file operations (reading, writing, and appending to files), and a suite of analysis and utility tools such as computing file hashes, finding duplicates, and generating or extracting ZIP archives. In addition, you can analyze text files to extract metadata like line counts and encoding, enabling automated file insights within client applications that consume MCP tool results. The server organizes these capabilities into a registry of tools that you can invoke by name through the MCP interface, returning structured results that include metadata, sizes, timestamps, and encoding information as applicable.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (recommended LTS) and npm installed on the host machine
• Access to the repository you want to run (clone or download)

Install and run:

1. Clone the repository and navigate to the server folder
2. Install dependencies
3. Build the server (if a build step is defined)
4. Start or configure the MCP server as specified

Example steps:

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd filesystem-server

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Build the server (if applicable)
npm run build

# 4. Run the server (example using node entry point or npm script)
# Adjust according to your start script or run environment
node dist/index.js

Configuration example (cline_mcp_settings.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["path/to/filesystem-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Optional: If you have environment-specific settings, ensure any required environment variables are defined in the runtime environment or via a dotenv/config mechanism used by your deployment setup.

Tips and common issues:

• Ensure the build output path matches the index.js entry used in the command args (adjust path/to/filesystem-server/build/index.js as needed).
• Validate file system permissions for the user running the MCP server to avoid permission denied errors when reading or writing files.
• When using hash, zip, or encoding features, verify that the underlying runtime has the required native bindings or libraries installed.
• If you modify tools or add new ones, update the Tool Registry and any relevant typings to keep MCP protocol clients in sync.
• For large directories or big files, consider streaming options and memory usage when selecting read_file or list_directory parameters to avoid heavy memory consumption.