Swissarmyhammer MCP Server

Swissarmyhammer mcp server connects Swissarmyhammer to AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol. AI coding agents are powerful -- but without structure, they wander. They lose track of the plan. They skip tests. They write code that works but isn't reviewed. They forget what they were doing halfway through.

What Swissarmyhammer does

AI coding agents are powerful -- but without structure, they wander. They lose track of the plan. They skip tests. They write code that works but isn't reviewed. They forget what they were doing halfway through.

Tools it exposes

Once connected, the assistant can call these 5 tools directly:

• Files — Read, write, edit, glob, grep -- with .gitignore support
• Shell — Safe command execution with security hardening
• Kanban — File-backed task boards -- tasks, subtasks, dependencies, tags
• Web — Fetch pages and convert to markdown, search the web
• Questions — Elicitation-based Q&A for capturing decisions

Installing the swissarmyhammer mcp server

Setup follows the standard MCP pattern: clone or install the server, then register it in your client's configuration file and restart the client. The configuration snippets on this page cover Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor.

Where it fits

Productivity servers pay off through capture: the tasks and notes that never get filed are the ones where opening the app is more friction than the thought is worth. Swissarmyhammer sits in that group, and the shape of its toolset — Files, Shell, Kanban among others — tells you what it is really for. Worth comparing against the other productivity 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 wballard, written in Python.
• MCP clients ask for confirmation before each tool call by default. Keep that on while you learn what the swissarmyhammer 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.