Desktop Commander MCP
MCP server that lets AI run terminal commands, manage processes, and search/edit files (diff-based) with Excel/PDF support and audit logs.
🛡️ AgentReady threat assessment
MAESTRO 7-layer threat model + OWASP AIVSS risk score for Desktop Commander MCP, derived from its capabilities.
Overview
Desktop Commander MCP is an open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives AI clients controlled access to your local development environment. It enables running terminal commands with streaming output and interactive process/session management, plus full filesystem operations like reading/writing files, creating directories, and recursive search. It includes diff-based “surgical” edits and pattern-based replacements, powered by ripgrep for fast repo-wide search. The tool also adds native Excel support (read/write/edit/search) and PDF tooling (extract text, create PDFs from markdown, and modify PDFs), along with comprehensive audit logging of tool calls for traceability.
Key features
- model context protocol
- terminal automation
- process control
- diff-based editing
- ripgrep search
- filesystem operations
- excel automation
- pdf tools
- audit logging
Use cases
- Running long-running terminal workflows through an AI chat, with output streaming and session/process control.
- Searching, updating, and refactoring codebases using ripgrep-powered search and diff-based file edits.
- Working with local files safely: read/write/move/list directories and inspect file metadata via MCP tools.
- Automating document/data tasks like Excel editing and PDF reading/creation/modification within the same toolset.