This MCP server exposes CyberChef's API through the MCP framework, allowing you to run CyberChef operations and recipes via an LLM/MCP client. The server provides tools to discover CyberChef operations and categories, bake individual recipes, run batches of recipes, and apply CyberChef's magic operation to detect encodings automatically. To use it, set the CyberChef API URL in your environment and start the server with uvx so your MCP client can communicate over the MCP protocol. The key resources you’ll interact with are: get_cyberchef_operations_categories, get_cyberchef_operation_by_category, bake_recipe, batch_bake_recipe, and perform_magic_operation. For development and testing, you can run the server locally and connect from an MCP client or the MCP inspector.

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.8+ (or a compatible Python runtime)
• Access to a CyberChef Server API endpoint (CYBERCHEF_API_URL)
• Internet access to install dependencies

Step-by-step installation:

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/your-org/slouchd-cyberchef-api-mcp-server.git cd slouchd-cyberchef-api-mcp-server

2. Create and activate a virtual environment (optional but recommended): python -m venv venv

   On Windows

   venv\Scripts\activate

   On macOS/Linux

   source venv/bin/activate

3. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure the environment variable for CyberChef API URL. You can export it now or set it in your MCP run command: export CYBERCHEF_API_URL="https://your-cyberchef-api.example/api"

5. Run the server using the MCP runner (example shown in README): uvx run --with mcp[cli] --directory cyberchef-api-mcp-server/cyberchef_api_mcp_server/ mcp run server.py

6. Verify the server is reachable via your MCP client and start issuing MCP commands to browse categories, bake recipes, or perform magic operations.

Tips and notes:

• Ensure CYBERCHEF_API_URL is reachable from the host running the MCP server.
• The server exposes these tools: get_cyberchef_operations_categories, get_cyberchef_operation_by_category, bake_recipe, batch_bake_recipe, perform_magic_operation.
• In client configurations, you may want to preload the env variable in the mcpServers block as shown in the example YAML/JSON snippets.
• For testing, you can use the MCP inspector or an MCP client that supports the protocol to verify responses from each tool.
• If you switch CyberChef API backends, update CYBERCHEF_API_URL accordingly to avoid connection errors.
• Logs and debugging can help diagnose authentication or network issues between your MCP server and the CyberChef API.