Proxmox MCP server

Simple Proxmox MCP

MCP server for managing Proxmox VE

50 tools — nodes, QEMU VMs, LXC containers, storage, cluster, snapshots.

Why this one?

• One image, multi-arch — docker run ghcr.io/akmalovaa/proxmox-mcp:latest and you're done
• Just env vars — no config files, no database, no state
• Read-only by default — destructive ops are gated behind an explicit PROXMOX_RISK_LEVEL
• stdio or Streamable HTTP — one env var apart; stdio by default, HTTP binds loopback
• Tiny codebase — a thin layer over Proxmoxer, no config files, no database, no state
• Raw JSON out — no formatting, no emoji; LLM gets clean data
• Readable failures — a 403, a dead host or a blocked tier come back as a sentence, not a stack trace

Quick start

Image: ghcr.io/akmalovaa/proxmox-mcp:latest (multi-arch: amd64 + arm64).

1. Export credentials in your shell profile (~/.zprofile, ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

# token auth (recommended — see "Least privilege" for the user and role to give it):
export PROXMOX_HOST=192.168.1.100
export PROXMOX_USER=mcp@pve
export PROXMOX_TOKEN_NAME=mcp
export PROXMOX_TOKEN_VALUE=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

# or password auth:
# export PROXMOX_USER=root@pam
# export PROXMOX_PASSWORD=your-password

# optional:
export PROXMOX_RISK_LEVEL=read

Reload: source ~/.zprofile (or restart the shell).

2. Add to ~/.claude/settings.json (Claude Code) or claude_desktop_config.json (Claude Desktop):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxmox": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_HOST",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_USER",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_PASSWORD",
        "ghcr.io/akmalovaa/proxmox-mcp:latest"]
    }
  }
}

or token auth:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxmox": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_HOST",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_USER",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_TOKEN_NAME",
        "-e", "PROXMOX_TOKEN_VALUE",
        "ghcr.io/akmalovaa/proxmox-mcp:latest"]
    }
  }
}

docker run -e VAR without a value passes the host variable through — no secrets in the config file. Restart the client — 32 read-only Proxmox tools become available (more if you raise PROXMOX_RISK_LEVEL).

For password auth, swap the token vars for PROXMOX_PASSWORD.

Note: Claude Desktop on macOS is launched via launchd and does not inherit ~/.zprofile/~/.zshrc. Either put the exports in ~/.zshenv, or fall back to an inline "env": { ... } block in the config.

Configuration

All settings are environment variables — set them in your shell profile, pass them inline to docker run -e, or declare them in your MCP client's env block.

Transport settings live under a PROXMOX_MCP_ prefix — see Streamable HTTP.

Authentication: token or password

Pick one. If both are set, the token wins.

Token (recommended):

export PROXMOX_USER=mcp@pve
export PROXMOX_TOKEN_NAME=mcp
export PROXMOX_TOKEN_VALUE=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Setting only one half of the pair is a startup error rather than a silent fallback to the password — a typo in PROXMOX_TOKEN_NAME used to mean quietly running as whoever PROXMOX_USER is.

Password (fallback):

export PROXMOX_PASSWORD=your-password

Least privilege

An MCP server is reachable by a model acting on text it did not write, so give it its own user and its own token rather than root@pam. On the Proxmox host:

# a user that is not root, with a role that matches the risk level you plan to run
pveum user add mcp@pve
pveum acl modify / --users mcp@pve --roles PVEAuditor          # read
# pveum acl modify / --users mcp@pve --roles PVEVMAdmin        # lifecycle / all

# a token for that user. Privilege Separation ON (the default) means the token starts
# with no rights at all, so grant it the same role explicitly:
pveum user token add mcp@pve mcp --privsep 1
pveum acl modify / --tokens 'mcp@pve!mcp' --roles PVEAuditor

Check what the token actually ended up with:

pveum user permissions mcp@pve --token mcp

PVEAuditor covers all 32 read tools. PVEVMAdmin on /vms adds guest lifecycle and snapshots; migrate_vm additionally needs VM.Migrate on the target node, and clone_vm needs Datastore.AllocateSpace on the target storage. Narrow the ACL path (/vms/101, /pool/homelab) if the server should only see part of the cluster.

root@pam still works and is the quickest thing for a local look around — it is just not what should be left running.

Risk levels

PROXMOX_RISK_LEVEL controls which tools exist. Tools above the active level are not registered, so they never appear in the MCP client's tool list:

Each elevated call is also re-checked at call time and logged to stderr (ALLOW / DENY + tool + tier).

The active level is not otherwise observable from the client side — a tool that is missing looks the same as a tool that was never written — so get_server_info reports it, along with the versions and the tool count.

PROXMOX_TOOLS_ALLOW narrows further within the tier, for a deployment that serves one specific agent:

export PROXMOX_TOOLS_ALLOW=list_nodes,list_containers,get_container_status,get_cluster_resources

Names that do not exist are a startup error, so a typo cannot silently amputate the tool list. Keep get_server_info on the list unless you have a reason not to — it is how a client learns what the rest of the list means.

Response shape

Inventory listings (list_nodes, list_vms, list_containers, get_cluster_resources) return a compact subset of each row: identity, status, uptime, CPU and memory. What is dropped is per-second IO counters and PSI pressure gauges — real data, but nothing a triage decision turns on, and several times the volume of what is kept. Pass verbose=true for the untouched rows.

Write tools answer with the task Proxmox accepted, not with a finished result:

{"state":"accepted","operation":"start_vm","node":"pve","vmid":101,
 "upid":"UPID:pve:...","poll_with":"get_task_status"}

cipassword and sshkeys are replaced with ***redacted*** everywhere, keeping the key so the model can still tell that cloud-init is configured. Set PROXMOX_REDACT_SECRETS=false to get the raw values.

Streamable HTTP

stdio stays the default and is what an MCP client on your own machine should use. For a shared deployment — a container in a cluster, several clients on one URL — set the transport and nothing else changes:

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 \
  -e PROXMOX_HOST -e PROXMOX_TOKEN_NAME -e PROXMOX_TOKEN_VALUE \
  -e PROXMOX_MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http \
  -e PROXMOX_MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e PROXMOX_MCP_ALLOWED_HOSTS=proxmox-mcp.example.com \
  ghcr.io/akmalovaa/proxmox-mcp:latest

The prefix is PROXMOX_MCP_, not PROXMOX_, because Kubernetes injects <SERVICE>_PORT for every linked Service — a Service named proxmox would otherwise redefine PROXMOX_PORT.

Sessions are not used (stateless_http): they were removed from the protocol in revision 2026-07-28, and without them several clients can share one URL and a rolling update does not cut anyone off.