noyalib-mcp

Model Context Protocol server exposing noyalib's lossless YAML editing to AI agents (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Zed, Continue.dev, …).

Contents

• Install — Cargo, npx, Docker
• Requirements — toolchain floor, platforms, the core pin
• Quick Start — JSON-RPC handshake
• Why this approach? — design rationale
• Connect — per-client configuration
• Tools — MCP tool reference
• Examples — runnable scripts
• Verification — cosign + npm provenance
• When not to use noyalib-mcp
• Documentation
• License

Install

cargo install noyalib-mcp

For environments without a Rust toolchain (the typical AI-agent deployment shape):

# npm wrapper — auto-downloads the matching binary on first run,
# caches under ~/.cache/noyalib-mcp/<version>/.
npx @sebastienrousseau/noyalib-mcp

# Container — multi-arch (linux/amd64, linux/arm64).
docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/sebastienrousseau/noyalib-mcp:latest

Split from the monorepo since v0.0.13. Prior versions shipped from sebastienrousseau/noyalib/crates/noyalib-mcp/ under the workspace-lockstep release cadence. From v0.0.13 onward noyalib-mcp lives here as its own crate, still released in strict lockstep with the parent noyalib at the same version. See ADR-0005 for the rationale and rollback recipe.

Both consume the same signed binary attached to every GitHub Release. See Verification for the verify commands.

Requirements

• Rust 1.86.0 or newer to build from source: rust-version in the manifest, enforced by the msrv-core CI job on every push.
• Any tier-1 platform. CI runs the tests on Linux, macOS, and Windows with the stable, beta, and nightly toolchains; stable is the gate, beta and nightly are early warning.
• The matching core. This crate pins noyalib at the identical =0.0.X and releases in lockstep with it; Cargo resolves that pin for you.
• An MCP client speaking JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio (2025-06-18 or 2026-07-28 protocol eras); the README's Connect section lists tested hosts.

Quick Start

The server speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio with newline-delimited frames, per the MCP specification. A typical agent launches the binary as a child process, sends initialize, then dispatches tool calls:

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"agent","version":"0.0.1"}}}
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized"}
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call",
 "params":{"name":"format","arguments":{"yaml":"a:1\nb:2\n"}}}

Why this approach?

AI agents that edit YAML configuration today regex-replace and corrupt comments, indentation, and document structure. The same agent fixing a port number in a Kubernetes manifest can shift every comment by a line, reorder sibling keys, or strip trailing whitespace that a downstream linter cared about.

noyalib's CST does the edits losslessly — a set("server.port", "9090") rewrites only the byte span of the 8080 scalar; the surrounding comments and indentation pass through untouched. This server is the protocol shim that lets MCP-aware clients drive that engine safely:

• Lossless mutation. tools/call set returns a document byte-identical to the input outside the touched span.
• Surgical reads. tools/call get walks the dotted path and returns just the value, not the whole tree.
• Schema validation. tools/call validate --schema runs the same JSON Schema 2020-12 engine noyavalidate ships.
• Stdio transport. Standard MCP. Works with every spec-compliant client.

Connect

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

claude mcp add noyalib $(which noyalib-mcp)

Cursor

~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noyalib": {
      "command": "noyalib-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Zed

~/.config/zed/settings.json:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "noyalib": {
      "command": { "path": "noyalib-mcp" }
    }
  }
}

Continue.dev

~/.continue/config.json:

{
  "experimental": {
    "modelContextProtocolServers": [
      { "transport": { "type": "stdio", "command": "noyalib-mcp" } }
    ]
  }
}

Any other MCP-aware client

Point at the binary; the transport is stdio with newline- delimited JSON-RPC 2.0.

Tools

The v0.0.1 server registers two file-oriented tools — both operate on a YAML file at file: <path>, not on inline source strings, so an agent's edits land on disk losslessly:

• noyalib_get — Takes { file: string, path: string }; returns the raw source fragment at the dotted/indexed path (e.g. server.host, items[0].name). No re-quoting; no canonicalisation.
• noyalib_set — Takes { file: string, path: string, value: string }; returns the file rewritten via the lossless CST so only the touched span changes; comments, blank lines, and sibling formatting survive byte-for-byte. The value is a YAML fragment (0.0.2, "hello", [1, 2, 3]); a parse failure leaves the file unchanged.
• noyalib_parse — Takes { yaml: string }; returns the JSON data model of the text (tags stripped, a stream as an array). Stateless: nothing on disk is touched.
• noyalib_edit — Takes { yaml: string, path: string, value: string }; returns the whole text with that one value replaced losslessly. Stateless.
• noyalib_validate — Takes { yaml: string, schema?: string }; returns valid with either the parse error (line and column) or every JSON Schema violation with its path. Stateless.

Each tool's full input schema lives in the response to tools/list. The server also handles the standard initialize / initialized / notifications/cancelled lifecycle.

Format / parse / validate are not exposed as MCP tools today — they're available via the noya-cli binaries (noyafmt, noyavalidate) and the noyalib library API. Promotion to first-class MCP tools is on the v0.0.2+ roadmap.

Examples

Agent-driving demos under crates/noyalib-mcp/examples/:

chmod +x crates/noyalib-mcp/examples/*.sh
crates/noyalib-mcp/examples/handshake.sh | jq -c .

POSIX-shell only — no jq, no node dependencies. Pipe through jq -c . if you want pretty-printed JSON responses.

Verification

GitHub Releases ship the crate archive and a CycloneDX SBOM, each with a sigstore bundle and checksums; the GHCR image is built from the tagged source. Pre-built binaries are not attached to releases yet. To verify a release artefact:

COSIGN_EXPERIMENTAL=1 cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github.com/sebastienrousseau/noyalib-mcp/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  --bundle <artefact>.bundle \
  <artefact>

The npm wrapper additionally carries an npm provenance attestation:

npm view noyalib-mcp provenance

Full cookbook: pkg/VERIFY.md.

When not to use noyalib-mcp