Docker MCP Server

About

The Docker MCP server (ckreiling/mcp-server-docker) gives an AI assistant direct control of a Docker daemon over the Model Context Protocol: containers, images, networks and volumes, as tools rather than shell commands. It is the community server most people mean by "Docker MCP" — distinct from Docker’s own Docker MCP Gateway, which does not manage your containers at all but runs *other* MCP servers inside containers. If you want to ask Claude why the postgres container keeps restarting, you want this one; if you want a single secure endpoint in front of twenty catalog servers, you want the gateway. The tool surface is explicit and small enough to reason about: list_containers, create_container, run_container, recreate_container, start_container, fetch_container_logs, stop_container and remove_container for containers; list_images, pull_image, push_image, build_image and remove_image for images; list_networks / create_network / remove_network and list_volumes / create_volume / remove_volume for the rest. Two resource templates, docker://containers/{id}/logs and docker://containers/{id}/stats, let a client read logs and live stats by container ID or name without a tool call. It also ships a docker_compose prompt that puts the model into a plan-then-apply loop — you describe the containers you want under a project name, the model proposes a concise plan, and nothing runs until you approve it; reopening the prompt with the same project name re-reads the state of everything created under it, which is how you clean up after a lost chat. It runs on the Python Docker SDK’s from_env, so DOCKER_HOST applies: set ssh://user@host and the same server administers a remote engine. Two limits are deliberate and stated by the project — privileged options like --privileged and --cap-add/--cap-drop are not supported, and container configuration passes through the model, so no secrets belong in it.

Installation

uvx mcp-server-docker

Setting up the Docker MCP server

1. 1.Install with uv (recommended)

   The server is published to PyPI as mcp-server-docker and needs no clone or build — uvx fetches and runs it. Install uv first if you do not have it. The same block works in Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json), Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json) and VS Code, and no token or API key is involved: authorisation is whatever your local Docker socket already grants.

   claude_desktop_config.json

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "mcp-server-docker": {
         "command": "uvx",
         "args": ["mcp-server-docker"]
       }
     }
   }

2. 2.Or run the server itself in a container

   There is a Dockerfile in the repository for convenience — clone it and build the image, then run it with the Docker socket mounted, which is what lets the containerised server reach the daemon on the host. Note the trade this makes: mounting /var/run/docker.sock into a container grants that container effective control of the host’s Docker, so this is a packaging convenience, not a security boundary.

   shell

   docker build -t mcp-server-docker .
   
   # then, in your MCP config:
   "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm",
            "-v", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock",
            "mcp-server-docker:latest"]

3. 3.Point it at a remote engine over SSH

   The server builds its client with the Python Docker SDK’s from_env, so every variable that SDK reads applies — in practice DOCKER_HOST is the one that matters. Set it to an ssh:// URL in the env block and the same server administers a remote host, which is the server-administrator use case the project names first. SSH key auth has to already work for that user from the machine running the server.

   env entry

   "env": { "DOCKER_HOST": "ssh://myusername@myhost.example.com" }

What the server can do

Twenty tools across four object types, plus two resource templates. Roughly half mutate — create_container, run_container, recreate_container, remove_container, build_image, push_image, remove_image, remove_network and remove_volume all change state on the daemon.

What people use it for

Which one should you use?

Three servers get called "Docker MCP" in listings. They are not interchangeable, and the choice follows from what you want to control.

Categories

Works With

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Guides