director

Director provides MCP playbooks that bundle tools, prompts, and configuration to give AI agents new capabilities. It acts as a gateway between your agents and MCP servers, allowing you to switch playbooks with a single click or via CLI, while handling tool filtering, logging, and OAuth. You can connect major clients like Claude, Cursor, and VSCode to a single MCP endpoint, enabling portable skill sets across tasks. The CLI and web UI (Studio) let you manage playbooks, add or remove MCP servers, and call tools within a playbook to perform tasks like data extraction, reasoning steps, or tool orchestration in a controlled, observable way.

To use Director, install the CLI (or use the one-liner installation script provided in the project) and then start the gateway. Through the Studio UI or the CLI, you can view available tools, invoke MCP calls, and monitor logs in JSON for observability. Playbooks can be created per task or environment, and you can switch between them to reuse or share capabilities across agents and clients.

Prerequisites:

• curl or wget
• Node.js and npm installed (as Director is distributed via npm/yarn and a CLI built on Node.js)
• Internet access to install dependencies

Installation options:

1. One-liner installer (recommended): curl -LsSf https://director.run/install.sh | sh This installs the Director CLI and dependencies including Node and uvx as needed.

2. Via npm (alternative): npm install -g @director.run/cli

Running Director: director quickstart

If you prefer to inspect or run in a container, you can also use the Docker image provided in the repository: docker run -it --rm barnaby/director

After installation, you can open the Studio UI or use the CLI to manage playbooks and MCP tools.

Tips:

• The CLI provides commands to list, create, and connect playbooks, as well as to call specific MCP tools within a playbook.
• Use director studio to access the web UI for managing playbooks visually.
• Environment variables can be used to point Director at custom MCP endpoints or configure OAuth and logging behavior. Common variables include DIRECTOR_MCP_BASE_URL for the MCP gateway and any tokens or client IDs needed for OAuth integration.
• If you runDirector via the one-liner, ensure your network allows outbound connections to MCP endpoints and tool resources.
• The system is designed to be local-first but supports hosting and sharing playbooks across environments via a single MCP endpoint.
• For troubleshooting, check the JSON-formatted logs emitted by MCP calls for precise insights into tool usage and failures.