LABSCO SUMMARY
Discovery, not execution — and that is the point.
A coding agent is already good at chaining commands with pipes and filters; what it lacks is knowing that your internal search script exists at all. This publishes that list and gets out of the way, which keeps the tool surface small compared with wrapping every command as its own MCP tool.
What it is
A server that publishes your own command-line tools as MCP tool definitions. It never runs anything itself — the definitions only tell the model what is available and how to invoke it, and the agent's existing shell access does the work.
What you get
- A JSON catalog file where each entry carries a
name, adescriptionand an optionalusagehint commandto set the exact string to run when it differs from the tool name- Comments allowed in the catalog file, so you can annotate it
--config <path>orMCP_CLI_CATALOG_FILEto point at a catalog other than the default- Inspection with
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector npx mcp-cli-catalog
Requirements
Run it as npx mcp-cli-catalog (package mcp-cli-catalog, version 0.1.0). No account and no key. Two things it needs from you: a catalog file — ~/.mcp-cli-catalog.json by default — and an agent that already has shell access, since the server does not execute commands.
Setup effort
One command — npx mcp-cli-catalog
USE CASES
01
Making an in-house script discoverable
Add a name, a description and a usage line to the catalog and the agent starts reaching for it.
02
Giving different projects different tool sets
Keep a catalog per repository and select it with --config ./tools.json.
03
Teaching the agent the right invocation
Put the working pipeline in the usage field so it comes back as a hint rather than being reinvented.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Requires
npx on PATH
Where it runs
The documented client runs the server on your machine.
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
npx mcp-cli-catalogMCP Clients
Claude Code
CLAUDE CODE · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"cli-catalog": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"mcp-cli-catalog"
]
}
}
}