Oriel MCP Server

Safety-gated AI control of Docker and Colima: containers, images, volumes, networks, Compose. Exposed over MCP by the oriel mcp server, that capability becomes something an assistant can invoke while it works, not something you go and do afterwards.

What it actually does

Manage containers, images, volumes, networks, and Compose from a clean browser UI. Or hand the job to an AI: any MCP client (Claude, Cursor, a local LLM) drives the same tools the UI does, with the same secret masking and destructive-action grant. It works with any Docker engine on macOS and Linux (Colima, Docker Engine, OrbStack, Podman, or a remote daemon). A free, open-source Docker Desktop alternative in one ~13 MB binary that idles at 15–30 MB of RAM, with no Electron, no account, and an Apache-2.0 license.

• Containers: — live CPU/mem, exit codes, bulk actions, streaming logs, full inspect
• In-browser shell: — open an interactive terminal into any running container, straight from its details drawer
• AI control (MCP): — any MCP client drives Docker/Colima through the same validated, secret-masked tools, with destructive actions behind a grant. More ↓
• Images: — pull with registry search, prune, one-click tag
• Compose: — manage stacks, plus discover & deploy projects from disk
• Dashboard: — CPU history, memory, disk, uptime/outage tracking

Adding it to your client

Setup follows the usual MCP pattern — install or clone the server, register it in your client's configuration file, restart the client. The configuration blocks on this page cover the common clients.

Its toolset

Everything the assistant can do here goes through one of these:

• Containers — ** live CPU/mem, exit codes, bulk actions, streaming logs, full inspect
• Images — ** pull with registry search, prune, one-click tag
• Compose — ** manage stacks, plus discover & deploy projects from disk
• Dashboard — ** CPU history, memory, disk, uptime/outage tracking
• Interface — Graphical web UI
• Footprint — ~15–30 MB RAM, ~13 MB binary

Caveats

• It runs with your machine's permissions. That is convenient and also the reason to think about what you point it at before you approve a tool call.
• MCP clients confirm each tool call by default. Leave that on until you have watched what the oriel mcp server does with a few real requests.

When to reach for it

Plenty of cloud and infrastructure servers cover similar ground. The differences that matter in practice are scope of access and how much setup stands between you and a working tool call. Oriel's toolset — Containers, Images, Compose and 3 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by ParadoxInfinite; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.

SyncDev reviews every entry in this directory against the project's own documentation before publishing, and revisits them as servers change.