mcp-proxmox

MCP server for managing Proxmox VE clusters through AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and Cline.

Provision, manage, and monitor your entire Proxmox infrastructure through natural language. Create VMs and containers, manage snapshots, browse storage, and more.

Quick Start

# Run directly with uvx (no install needed)
uvx mcp-proxmox

# Or install with pip
pip install mcp-proxmox

Configuration

Set these environment variables (or create a .env file):

PROXMOX_HOST=192.168.1.100          # Your Proxmox VE host
PROXMOX_TOKEN_ID=user@pam!mcp       # API token ID
PROXMOX_TOKEN_SECRET=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx  # API token secret

Optional:

PROXMOX_PORT=8006                   # Default: 8006
PROXMOX_VERIFY_SSL=false            # Default: false

Creating a Proxmox API Token

1. Log into your Proxmox web UI
2. Go to Datacenter > Permissions > API Tokens
3. Click Add and create a token for your user
4. Uncheck "Privilege Separation" for full access, or assign specific permissions:
   • VM.Audit — read VM/CT status and config
   • VM.PowerMgmt — start/stop/shutdown/reboot
   • VM.Snapshot — create/rollback/delete snapshots
   • VM.Allocate — create/delete/clone VMs and containers
   • VM.Clone — clone operations
   • Datastore.Audit — list storages and browse content
   • Datastore.AllocateSpace — allocate disk space for new VMs/CTs
   • Sys.Audit — read node status and tasks
   • VM.Config.Disk — resize disks
   • VM.Config.CPU — change CPU allocation
   • VM.Config.Memory — change memory allocation
   • VM.Monitor — access QEMU monitor (for metrics)
   • VM.Console — console interaction tools (screenshots, keyboard input)
   • VM.Migrate — migrate VMs/CTs between nodes
   • Sys.Modify — manage firewall rules
   • VM.Config.Cloudinit — configure cloud-init parameters

Integration

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxmox": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-proxmox"],
      "env": {
        "PROXMOX_HOST": "192.168.1.100",
        "PROXMOX_TOKEN_ID": "user@pam!mcp",
        "PROXMOX_TOKEN_SECRET": "your-token-secret"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

Add to .claude/settings.json or ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxmox": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-proxmox"],
      "env": {
        "PROXMOX_HOST": "192.168.1.100",
        "PROXMOX_TOKEN_ID": "user@pam!mcp",
        "PROXMOX_TOKEN_SECRET": "your-token-secret"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to Cursor Settings > MCP with the same configuration as above.

Available Tools

Discovery

Lifecycle

Storage

Provisioning

Backup & Restore

Command Execution

Note: exec_command requires qemu-guest-agent installed and running inside the VM. Not supported for LXC containers (Proxmox API limitation).

Console Interaction

Note: Console tools do not require qemu-guest-agent and need only the VM.Console privilege. vm_screenshot opens the same VNC websocket tunnel the Proxmox web UI uses (RFB 3.8 with DES-based VNC auth) and is implemented in pure stdlib (custom WebSocket client + DES). Only QEMU VMs are supported. Text entry is layout-dependent: vm_send_text maps ASCII to a US keyboard layout (Shift-mapping for uppercase and symbols); non-ASCII input (e.g. Cyrillic) is not supported by the sendkey protocol.

Snapshots

Network

Resize

Monitoring

Firewall

Migration

Templates & Cloud-init

Safety

Destructive operations (stop_guest, reboot_guest, rollback_snapshot, delete_snapshot, delete_guest, resize_guest, restore_backup, delete_firewall_rule, migrate_guest, create_template) require explicit confirm=true. The first call returns a warning describing the impact; only a second call with confirmation executes the action.

Examples

Once connected, you can ask your AI assistant:

• "List all my VMs and their status"
• "How much memory is VM 100 using?"
• "Shut down container 105"
• "Create a snapshot of VM 200 called before-upgrade"
• "Show me the CPU usage of VM 100 over the last day"
• "What tasks ran on node pve recently?"
• "Which VMs are stopped?"
• "What storage pools do I have and how full are they?"
• "Show me available ISO images"
• "Create a new Ubuntu VM with 4 cores and 8GB RAM"
• "Clone VM 100 as a test environment"
• "Create a Debian container from template"
• "Delete the old test VM 999"
• "Back up VM 100 to the zfs-backup-storage"
• "Show me all backups for VM 200"
• "Restore the latest backup of container 101"
• "Run 'df -h' on VM 100"
• "Check if nginx is running on VM 200"
• "Take a screenshot of VM 100 so I can see the console"
• "The VM is stuck at a login prompt — type 'root' and press Enter"
• "Show me the network bridges on node pve"
• "Give VM 100 more CPU — bump it to 8 cores"
• "Add 50GB of disk to container 101"
• "Show me the firewall rules on VM 100"
• "Allow TCP port 443 on container 101"
• "Migrate VM 200 to node pve2"
• "List all templates in the cluster"
• "Convert VM 102 into a template"
• "Set cloud-init on VM 100: user admin, IP dhcp, DNS 8.8.8.8"

Troubleshooting

Missing required environment variables

This error means one or more required connection settings are not available to the server process. Copy .env.example to .env, then set PROXMOX_HOST, PROXMOX_TOKEN_ID, and PROXMOX_TOKEN_SECRET. If you configure an MCP client directly, make sure the same variables are present in that client's env block.

403 Permission check failed

A 403 usually means the API token is valid but does not have enough Proxmox privileges for the requested operation. Revisit Creating a Proxmox API Token and either uncheck "Privilege Separation" for full access or assign the specific privileges listed there, such as VM.Audit, VM.PowerMgmt, VM.Snapshot, or storage permissions for datastore operations.

exec_command fails for guest-agent or LXC reasons

exec_command only works for QEMU VMs with qemu-guest-agent installed and running inside the guest. If the tool reports that the QEMU guest agent is not responding, start or install the agent in the VM and retry. LXC containers are not supported by this Proxmox API path, so use another container access method instead.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'mcp.server.fastmcp'

The MCP Python SDK 2.0 removed the mcp.server.fastmcp module that mcp-proxmox 1.2.1 and earlier import. Fresh installs (uvx mcp-proxmox, uv tool install, pip install) resolved mcp 2.x and failed on startup — in Claude Desktop this only shows up as "Server disconnected". Upgrade to mcp-proxmox 1.2.2 or later, which pins mcp<2. If you must stay on an older mcp-proxmox, constrain the SDK yourself: uvx --with "mcp<2" mcp-proxmox.

Self-signed certificate or connection errors

Proxmox commonly runs on port 8006, so check that PROXMOX_HOST and PROXMOX_PORT point to the same endpoint you use for the Proxmox web UI. For homelab clusters with self-signed certificates, leave PROXMOX_VERIFY_SSL=false or set it explicitly. Use PROXMOX_VERIFY_SSL=true only when the Proxmox certificate chains to a CA trusted by your runtime.

Development

git clone https://github.com/antonio-mello-ai/mcp-proxmox.git
cd mcp-proxmox
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run tests
pytest

# Lint
ruff check src/ tests/
ruff format src/ tests/

# Type check
mypy src/

License

MIT