boot-doctor-mcp

A real MCP server for PC no-boot / no-display / no-POST troubleshooting. No LLM guessing at hardware causes — a plain, deterministic rule engine plus real, sourced BIOS beep-code tables.

Why deterministic, not an LLM

Nobody wants a language model hallucinating "your GPU is dead" when it isn't. Hardware advice where being wrong costs real money and real time deserves a fixed, auditable rule set, not a plausible-sounding guess. Every answer this tool gives traces back to a real source or a fixed, testable rule — never an invented explanation.

Tools

diagnose_symptoms(powers_on, fans_spin=None, fans_stay_running=None, display_output=False, tried_cmos_reset=False, tried_minimal_config=False, tried_different_cable_or_monitor=False)

Real, ranked next troubleshooting steps, given what's already been tried — the same power-stage → CMOS reset → minimal-config-test → swap-test sequence a real technician runs, ordered by what's cheapest to rule out first. Not a diagnosis of the exact broken part; a real repair often still needs a swap test against known-good parts, and this tool says so explicitly rather than pretending symptom-matching alone can replace it.

lookup_beep_code(bios_type, pattern)

Looks up a beep pattern (e.g. "10 short", "1 long, 2 short", "continuous") against real, sourced BIOS beep-code tables.

bios_type is one of:

• ami_legacy — classic AMIBIOS
• ami_aptio — modern AMI Aptio (UEFI), kept separate on purpose: legacy AMIBIOS and Aptio use genuinely different codes for the same beep counts, a mistake common in beginner troubleshooting guides that merge them into one table
• award_phoenix — Award/Phoenix BIOS

Returns real information, not a fabricated guess, when the exact pattern isn't in the table — modern boards increasingly have no speaker at all and use debug LEDs instead, so "no match" is itself a real, honest result.

Sources

Beep-code data fetched and cross-referenced live (not from training-data memory) from IONOS and Thomas-Krenn. Real, stated limitation: OEMs (HP, Dell, ASUS, etc.) sometimes customize or extend these codes, and modern boards increasingly skip the speaker entirely in favor of debug LEDs — a documented pattern not matching here doesn't necessarily mean nothing is wrong.

Install

pip install boot-doctor-mcp

Add to your MCP client config (e.g. Claude Code):

claude mcp add boot-doctor-mcp -- boot-doctor-mcp

Or run directly for local testing:

python -m boot_doctor_mcp.server

Skill

A SKILL.md ships inside this same package — not a separate download — and teaches Claude when and how to use these tools correctly (e.g. never guessing a BIOS type, never stating a broken component as fact from symptoms alone). Install it into your project:

boot-doctor-mcp-install-skill

Run it from the project root you want the skill active in — it writes to .claude/skills/boot-doctor-mcp/SKILL.md relative to your current directory.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest