MCP File Tools MCP Server

MCP File Tools

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MCP server for file operations with non-UTF-8 encoding support. Auto-detects and converts 22 encodings (Cyrillic, Windows-125x, ISO-8859, KOI8, UTF-16) so AI assistants can read and write legacy files without corrupting data.

Perfect for: Delphi/Pascal projects, legacy VB6 apps, old PHP/HTML sites, config files with non-UTF-8 text.

What It Does

Provides 19 tools for file operations with automatic encoding conversion:

• `read_text_file` - Read files with encoding auto-detection and conversion
• `read_multiple_files` - Read multiple files concurrently with encoding support
• `write_file` - Write files in specific encodings
• `edit_file` - Line-based edits with diff preview and whitespace-flexible matching
• `copy_file` - Copy a file to a new location
• `delete_file` - Delete a file
• `list_directory` - Browse directories with pattern filtering
• `tree` - Compact indented tree view (85% fewer tokens than JSON)
• `directory_tree` - Get recursive tree view as JSON (deprecated, use tree)
• `search_files` - Recursively search for files matching glob patterns
• `grep_text_files` - Regex search in file contents with encoding support
• `detect_encoding` - Auto-detect file encoding with confidence score
• `convert_encoding` - Convert file between encodings
• `detect_line_endings` - Detect line ending style (CRLF/LF/mixed)
• `list_encodings` - Show all supported encodings
• `get_file_info` - Get file/directory metadata
• `create_directory` - Create directories recursively (mkdir -p)
• `move_file` - Move or rename files and directories
• `list_allowed_directories` - Show accessible directories

Supported encodings (22 total):

• Unicode: UTF-8, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE (with BOM detection for UTF-16 and UTF-32)
• Cyrillic: Windows-1251, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, CP866, ISO-8859-5
• Western European: Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15
• Central European: Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2
• Greek: Windows-1253, ISO-8859-7
• Turkish: Windows-1254, ISO-8859-9
• Other: Hebrew (1255), Arabic (1256), Baltic (1257), Vietnamese (1258), Thai (874)

See TOOLS.md for detailed parameters and examples.

Security: All operations restricted to allowed directories only.

Installation

MCP Registry

This server is listed in the Official MCP Registry for discovery.

Windows x64

Note: Run these commands in PowerShell, not in CMD.

# Download
mkdir -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools"
iwr "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_windows_amd64.exe" -OutFile "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe"
# Install with Claude Code + VSCode (allows access to D:\Projects)
claude mcp add --scope user file-tools -- "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe" "D:\Projects"

Linux x64

# Download
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -L "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_linux_amd64" -o ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools
# Install with Claude Code + VSCode (allows access to ~/Projects)
claude mcp add --scope user file-tools -- ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools ~/Projects

macOS ARM64

# Download
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -L "https://github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/releases/latest/download/mcp-file-tools_darwin_arm64" -o ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools
# Install with Claude Code + VSCode (allows access to ~/Projects)
claude mcp add --scope user file-tools -- ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools ~/Projects

Go Install (All Platforms)

# Install with Go (requires Go 1.23+)
go install github.com/dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools/cmd/mcp-file-too