denario-mcp

A lightweight, local MCP client for Denario. It runs on the user's machine and owns all local filesystem + git work; the private Denario research pipeline runs remotely on Cloud Run and only returns data. This is the air-sdk-style split applied to Denario — see ../DESIGN.md for the full architecture and rationale.

Why a local client

Running denario_setup remotely can never create a project on the user's disk, and gh repo create in a container would use the server's GitHub identity. So file/git work must be local. Only the confidential research compute is remote. See DESIGN.md §1.

Install

pip install -e ./denario-mcp     # from web/, during development
# or, once published:  pip install denario-mcp

The package is intentionally light — it depends only on mcp and httpx, not on the heavy Denario research stack. The denario_setup logic is vendored (stdlib-only) in setup_local.py.

Use with Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "denario": {
      "command": "denario-mcp",
      "env": {
        "DENARIO_API_KEY": "…",                       // for remote compute steps
        "DENARIO_CLOUD_URL": "https://denario-web-….run.app"
      }
    }
  }
}

denario-mcp requires git and the GitHub CLI (gh, authenticated as the user) on PATH for denario_setup's repo creation.

Status

How a compute step flows (denario_idea)

client (denario-mcp)                         server (Cloud Run)
  read local data_description.md
  POST /v1/compute/idea  ───────────────────►  denario_compute.run_step("idea")
                                                  ephemeral dir, run pipeline,
                                                  return idea.md as data
  ◄─────────────────────────────────────────  { artifacts, log }
  write idea.md into local project dir
  git commit && push  (user identity)

The server never touches the user's disk or git; the client owns both.

Environment