MCP -for-Hashing

This MCP server exposes two tools: calculate_md5 and calculate_sha256. They are designed to be invoked via MCP-compatible clients (for example, VS Code Copilot Chat or Claude Desktop). When you issue a request to calculate_md5, the server will compute the MD5 hash of the provided text. When you issue a request to calculate_sha256, it will return the SHA-256 hash of the input. To use these tools, configure your MCP client to point at the hashing MCP server entry (named hashing in the example). The client will send a request payload that asks the appropriate tool to process your input and will display the resulting hash. You can test basic usage by asking for the MD5 or SHA-256 hash of a sample string, e.g., “hello world” or “MCP is cool!”. The server is compatible with common MCP clients and can be run via Docker or directly in a Python environment as shown in the installation guide.

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.13+ is recommended
• A Python environment manager (venv or uv) is optional but recommended
• Access to install packages from PyPI

Option A: Running the server directly (Python)

1. Create and activate a virtual environment (recommended):

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Linux/macOS
.venv\Scripts\activate    # Windows

2. Install the hashing-mcp-server package:

pip install hashing-mcp-server

3. Run the server module (if you want to test locally):

python -m hashing_mcp_server

Option B: Running via Docker (recommended for isolation)

1. Pull the Docker image:

docker pull kunalpathak13/hashing-mcp-server:latest

2. Run the container with STDIN kept open for MCP communication:

docker run -i --rm kunalpathak13/hashing-mcp-server:latest

3. Configure your MCP client to connect using the docker command as shown in the README: e.g., {"command": "docker", "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "kunalpathak13/hashing-mcp-server:latest"]}

Tips:

• If you run via Docker, ensure Docker is installed and running on your host.
• When running directly, you can enable verbose debugging by setting HASHING_MCP_SERVER_DEBUG=1 in the environment.
• The MCP client configuration examples in the README use docker and direct-executable paths; adapt according to your environment and client docs.
• The npm_package field is not applicable for this Python-based server.
• If you encounter port or IPC issues, verify that the MCP client and server share the same IPC protocol and that you are using the correct tool names (calculate_md5 and calculate_sha256).