blendersessiond

blendersessiond launches, configures, and owns local GUI Blender Sessions for agent workflows. It installs a pinned BlenderMCP addon at startup, allocates an isolated loopback port for each Session, reports process and addon Health, and stops only the Blender process trees it launched.

It supports macOS, Windows, and Linux with Python 3.11 or newer.

Highlights

• No manual addon installation or Blender preference setup.
• Named Sessions with independent state, logs, and MCP ports.
• Static MCP client configuration despite dynamically allocated ports.
• Health checks require both a live Blender process and a responsive addon.
• Existing .blend scenes and direct raw addon calls are supported.
• stop is predictable: it terminates the owned process tree and never saves.

Requirements and compatibility

• uv with uvx available on PATH.
• Python 3.11 or newer.
• Blender installed on macOS, Windows, or Linux.

blendersessiond is GUI-only and same-machine: the CLI and Blender Session run on the same machine, and blendersessiond has no remote control plane or headless mode. The real-Blender smoke workflow currently validates Blender 5.2.0 on all three platforms; macOS and Windows GUI runs are best-effort in hosted CI. See the compatibility record for the exact Blender, addon, and MCP server pins.

The addon is vendored from ahujasid/blender-mcp at commit da4e16d, then minimally patched for loopback binding, per-Session ports, managed startup, and telemetry removal. Upstream BlenderMCP includes default-on telemetry that reports usage — and, when it believes consent was given, prompts, code, and screenshots — to the upstream maintainer's hosted backend. blendersessiond does not want that telemetry: the vendored addon has all of it deleted, and mcp-serve runs the stock server with DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true, so managed Sessions send no telemetry at all. The MCP stdio server itself is not vendored: mcp-serve runs the validated blender-mcp==1.6.4 package through uvx. The complete patch and re-pin procedure are in the compatibility record, with upstream licensing in third-party attribution.

Install

Install the published CLI from PyPI:

uv tool install blendersessiond

Or install from a source checkout:

git clone https://github.com/BramVR/blendersessiond.git
cd blendersessiond
uv tool install .

Ensure uv's tool executable directory is on PATH. Pass Blender explicitly when automatic discovery does not find it.

Quickstart

These commands check the machine, start the default Session with a factory-empty scene, make one raw addon call, and stop the Session:

blendersessiond doctor
blendersessiond start
blendersessiond call get_scene_info
blendersessiond stop

Use a specific Blender executable or open an existing scene when starting:

blendersessiond doctor --blender /path/to/blender
blendersessiond start --blender /path/to/blender --scene /path/to/shot.blend

--scene must name an existing .blend file. Without it, Blender opens a factory-empty file.

Commands

• doctor: Check whether this machine can host a Session and report recorded Session Health.
• start: Launch and own a Blender Session, optionally from an existing scene.
• status: Report one named Session or list every recorded Session.
• call: Send one raw command and optional JSON parameters to a healthy Session's addon.
• stop: Terminate an owned Session process tree without saving.
• mcp-serve: Connect the validated blender-mcp stdio server to one healthy Session.

Run blendersessiond COMMAND --help for each command's flags. doctor, start, status, and stop support versioned JSON output with --json; successful call invocations always print the addon's JSON result, while call --json also makes failures machine-readable. mcp-serve reserves standard input and output for the MCP protocol.

Exit codes follow one convention:

• 0: success or healthy status;
• 1: operation failure, including unhealthy, stale, or not-found status;
• 2: command-line usage error.

MCP client registration

Start the default Session before launching the MCP client:

blendersessiond start

Register the installed CLI in the project's .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "blender": {
      "command": "blendersessiond",
      "args": ["mcp-serve"]
    }
  }
}

mcp-serve requires uvx on PATH. It checks Session Health, then runs the validated blender-mcp server against that Session's loopback port. Keep the Session running while the MCP client uses it.

Multiple Sessions

The default Session Name is default. Use --name to run independent Sessions side by side:

blendersessiond start --name modeling
blendersessiond start --name lighting --scene /path/to/lighting.blend
blendersessiond status
blendersessiond call get_scene_info --name modeling
blendersessiond call get_object_info --name lighting --params '{"name":"Cube"}'
blendersessiond stop --name modeling
blendersessiond stop --name lighting

Give each Session its own MCP server registration and MCP client connection:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "blender-modeling": {
      "command": "blendersessiond",
      "args": ["mcp-serve", "--name", "modeling"]
    },
    "blender-lighting": {
      "command": "blendersessiond",
      "args": ["mcp-serve", "--name", "lighting"]
    }
  }
}

Save before stop

stop never saves and never prompts. Check status for the unsaved-changes warning, then save explicitly through Blender, MCP, or call before stopping when work must persist.

Save an already named scene through call:

blendersessiond call execute_code --params '{"code":"bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile()"}'
blendersessiond stop

Give a factory-empty scene a path before stopping:

blendersessiond call execute_code --params '{"code":"bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=\"/absolute/path/to/scene.blend\")"}'
blendersessiond stop

Use --name SESSION on both commands for a named Session.

Configuration and state

Blender discovery uses the first available source in this order:

1. --blender PATH on doctor or start;
2. the BLENDERSESSIOND_BLENDER environment variable;
3. blender or blender.exe on PATH;
4. standard platform installation locations.

When multiple valid standard installations are present, blendersessiond uses the newest version it can probe.

Session records and Blender stdout/stderr logs live under the per-user state directory:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/blendersessiond
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\blendersessiond
• Linux: $XDG_STATE_HOME/blendersessiond when set, otherwise ~/.local/state/blendersessiond

Set BLENDERSESSIOND_STATE_DIR to an absolute path to override this location. blendersessiond status prints each Session's log paths; use --json when a script needs the complete state record.

Session MCP ports are allocated upward from 9876 on loopback. Set BLENDERSESSIOND_BASE_MCP_PORT to start allocation from a different port — the test suite uses this to keep fake-Blender Sessions off the ports a real Session on the same machine may hold.

Security and limitations

The vendored addon binds to IPv4 loopback (127.0.0.1) but its protocol is deliberately unauthenticated and permits arbitrary Python execution inside Blender. Any local account or process that can reach a Session's loopback port can drive that Session. Do not expose or forward the port to an untrusted network or machine.

The addon protocol is single-client. Give each concurrent MCP client its own named Session. blendersessiond does not supervise or restart Sessions in the background; status checks their Health on demand.

Development

Install the locked development environment, then run the same lint and test gates used by CI:

uv sync --locked
uv run ruff check .
uv run pytest

Real-Blender tests are opt-in because they launch the GUI. For example, on macOS or Linux:

BLENDERSESSIOND_REAL_E2E=1 \
BLENDERSESSIOND_BLENDER=/path/to/blender \
uv run pytest -m real_blender

CI runs unit and fake-Blender lifecycle tests on macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus a pinned real-Blender round trip.

Website

The public project website is blendersessiond.bramvanrompuy.be. The project website is a dependency-free static build from website/. Its visual source is the ImageGen concept in docs/assets/website-concept.png, derived from the project header artwork. Build and check it locally with:

node scripts/build-site.mjs
node scripts/check-site.mjs
python3 -m http.server --directory dist/site 8000

GitHub Pages publishes dist/site through .github/workflows/pages.yml. The custom subdomain uses a DNS CNAME record from blendersessiond.bramvanrompuy.be to BramVR.github.io; GitHub Actions Pages does not require a repository CNAME file. Search-discovery files include robots.txt, sitemap.xml, structured project metadata, and an experimental llms.txt summary.

Reference

• Agent skill
• Changelog
• Ubiquitous language
• Decision records
• BlenderMCP compatibility pins and re-pin procedure
• Release process
• Third-party attribution
• v1 PRD issue #1