Tabby MCP Server

Tabby mcp server connects Tabby to AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol. Model Context Protocol implementation for Tabby.

What Tabby does

A Tabby Terminal plugin that exposes your active terminal sessions through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It lets MCP-compatible AI clients discover terminal tabs, execute commands, read terminal buffers, and retrieve long command output.

Key capabilities

• MCP server inside Tabby — — exposes an SSE endpoint at http://localhost:3001/sse
• Terminal session discovery — — list local and SSH-backed Tabby terminal sessions
• Command execution — — run commands in a selected Tabby terminal tab
• Robust output capture — — simple marker protocol with exit-code parsing
• Terminal buffer access — — read visible/history buffer ranges from a tab
• Long output pagination — — retrieve full command output by outputId
• Pair programming mode — — optional confirmation dialogs and user feedback
• Docker-based build — — reproducible local plugin builds for Tabby

Tools it exposes

Once connected, the assistant can call these 4 tools directly:

• get_ssh_session_list — List available Tabby terminal sessions
• exec_command — Execute a shell command in a terminal tab
• get_terminal_buffer — Read terminal buffer content
• get_command_output — Retrieve full/paginated command output

Installing the tabby 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.

Requirements

• Tabby Terminal installed and running - Docker, for local builds - macOS for the provided install script path - An MCP-compatible client with SSE support, such as Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, or another SSE-capable MCP client

Where it fits

Cloud and DevOps servers put infrastructure on speaking terms with your assistant, so "why is this broken?" is answered from real state rather than a generic checklist. Tabby sits in that group, and the shape of its toolset — get_ssh_session_list, exec_command, get_terminal_buffer among others — tells you what it is really for. Worth comparing against the other cloud devops 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 thuanpham582002, written in Go.
• MCP clients ask for confirmation before each tool call by default. Keep that on while you learn what the tabby 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.