Jinni MCP Server

If you want an AI assistant working directly with Jinni, the jinni mcp server is the bridge. Jinni is a tool to efficiently provide Large Language Models the context of your projects. It gives a consolidated view of relevant project files, overcoming the limitations and inefficiencies of reading files one by one. Each file's content is preceded by a simple header indicating its path:.

What Jinni does

Jinni is a tool to efficiently provide Large Language Models the context of your projects. It gives a consolidated view of relevant project files, overcoming the limitations and inefficiencies of reading files one by one. Each file's content is preceded by a simple header indicating its path:

Key capabilities

• Efficient Context Gathering: — Reads and concatenates relevant project files in one operation
• Intelligent Filtering (Gitignore-Style Inclusion): —
• Uses a system based on .gitignore syntax (pathspec library's gitwildmatch)
• Automatically loads .gitignore files from the project root downward. These exclusions can be overridden by rules in .contextfiles
• Supports hierarchical configuration using .contextfiles placed within your project directories. Rules are applied dynamically based on the file/directory being processed
• Matching Behavior: — Patterns match against the path relative to the target directory being processed. Output paths remain relative to the original project root
• Rule Root Behavior: — Each target has its own rule root:
• Targets within the project root (or CWD) use the project root/CWD as their rule root

Tools it exposes

Once connected, the assistant can call these 2 tools directly:

• Invocation — ** The model can invoke the usage tool (no arguments needed)
• Output — ** Returns the content of the README.md file as a string

Installing the jinni mcp server

The server is distributed via PyPI as jinni-server, so most clients can run it without a manual build step. Add it to your MCP client's configuration and restart the client to pick it up — the copy-paste configs for Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor are on this page.

Where it fits

File and storage servers are what separate an assistant that talks about your documents from one that actually works with them. Jinni sits in that group, and the shape of its toolset — Invocation, Output — tells you what it is really for. Worth comparing against the other file systems servers in this directory before you commit to one, since several overlap in scope but differ sharply in setup cost and permissions.

Practical notes

• This server runs locally, so it operates with whatever access your machine and its credentials already have. Scope that deliberately rather than by default.
• Maintained by smat-dev, written in Python.
• MCP clients ask for confirmation before each tool call by default. Keep that on while you learn what the jinni mcp server actually does with your data.
• Every entry in this directory is reviewed by hand before it goes live, and details are checked against the project's own documentation.