expty-mcp

expty-mcp is a high-performance Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that equips AI assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity, VS Code) with persistent, zero-loss Interactive PTY Process and Serial Communication capabilities.

Engineered specifically for persistent SSH sessions, remote server administration, local shells, REPLs, container debugging, and hardware serial ports (UART/U-Boot). It features an Atomic Expect Engine, continuous background ingestion daemon, transport-level microsecond timestamping with intelligent 50ms continuation detection, and full cross-chunk ANSI sanitization.

Architecture Design

Key Features

• Zero-Loss Background Daemon: Dedicated reader daemon continuously ingests bytes into memory in real time—eliminating dropped output during LLM reasoning pauses.
• Unified PTY & Serial Transports: Seamlessly spawn local processes (bash, python, gdb), SSH sessions (ssh user@router), or connect to physical UART devices (/dev/ttyUSB0, COM3).
• Accurate Transport-Level Timestamping: Timestamps are stamped at the moment bytes leave the OS kernel/driver system call, avoiding queue or scheduling jitter.
• Smart 50ms Packet Continuation:
  • Packet fragments arriving within < 50ms are smoothly merged into a single line.
  • Fragments arriving after >= 50ms (e.g. driver pause, slow command) are split into separate lines tagged with ↳ and their own timestamp—enabling effortless correlation against test framework logs (Pytest, RobotFramework).
• Atomic Expect Engine (expect): Match regex or substring prompt patterns atomically (['password:', '# ', '>>>']) with buffer slicing and retention.
• Prompt-Aware Execution (exec_expect): Send commands and wait for prompt return in a single call, returning structured JSON results with execution status and duration.
• Causal Anchor Preservation: Preserves command echo in output streams, providing LLMs with an unbroken causal chain for self-correction without regex stripping bugs.
• Cross-Chunk ANSI Sanitization: Intelligently handles split escape sequences (e.g. \x1b[ in chunk 1 and 31m in chunk 2), preventing terminal garbage from entering clean buffers.
• Thread-Safe Multi-Session Management: Concurrently manage multiple terminal sessions with strict session guarding and double-checked locking auto-spawn.
• Fast Process Exit Detection: Instantly detects when a child process or SSH connection terminates, returning exit codes immediately without waiting for timeouts.
• Periodic Injection (poll_cmd): Inject keepalive characters or autoboot interrupt keys (e.g. spaces for U-Boot) at high frequency during expect wait windows.
• 100% Cross-Platform: Native POSIX PTY on Linux & macOS (ptyprocess), leak-free Windows ConPTY worker queue (pywinpty), and cross-platform Serial support (pyserial).

Available MCP Tools

Practical Examples

1. Persistent SSH Session (No repeated logins)

// Step 1: Spawn SSH connection
// Tool: spawn
{
  "command": "ssh root@192.168.1.1",
  "name": "openwrt-router"
}

// Step 2: Handle password prompt with Expect
// Tool: expect
{
  "patterns": ["password:", "# "],
  "command": "admin",
  "timeout": 10.0
}

// Step 3: Run interactive commands effortlessly
// Tool: exec_expect
{
  "command": "cat /etc/config/network"
}

2. Time-Correlated Log Analysis (Aligning with Test Frameworks)

// Tool: get_history
{
  "limit": 5,
  "with_timestamps": true
}

Output:

[2026-09-13 15:30:45.100] [Kernel] Initializing network interface eth0...
[2026-09-13 15:30:45.120] [Kernel] PHY driver link speed: 1000Mbps
[2026-09-13 15:30:45.300] [Kernel] Loading crypto module...
[2026-09-13 15:30:46.850] ↳ done (took 1550ms)
[2026-09-13 15:30:46.870] IPQ807x# 

Notice how the 1.55-second driver pause is clearly split with ↳ , immediately pinpointing where execution stalled relative to your test runner logs.

3. Interactive Python REPL / Debugger

// Tool: spawn
{
  "command": "python3",
  "name": "python-repl"
}

// Tool: exec_expect
{
  "command": "import math; math.factorial(10)"
}

4. Hardware UART Bootloader Interception

// Step 1: Open serial port
// Tool: serial
{
  "port": "/dev/ttyUSB0",
  "baudrate": 115200
}

// Step 2: Interrupt autoboot with high-frequency space injection
// Tool: expect
{
  "patterns": ["IPQ807x#", "U-Boot#"],
  "poll_cmd": " ",
  "poll_interval": 0.05,
  "timeout": 15.0
}

Installation & Configuration

Option 1: Fast Zero-Install with uvx (Recommended for MCP Clients)

No manual installation required. MCP clients can run expty-mcp directly via Astral uv:

# Run directly with uvx (from GitHub repository)
uvx --from git+https://github.com/weyou/expty-mcp.git expty

# Or after PyPI release
uvx expty-mcp

Option 2: Local Installation (with uv or pip)

git clone https://github.com/weyou/expty-mcp.git
cd expty-mcp

# Using uv (fastest)
uv pip install -e .

# Or using standard pip
pip install -e .

Client Configuration

1. Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Using uvx (Zero-Install):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "expty": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/weyou/expty-mcp.git", "expty"]
    }
  }
}

Using local Python environment:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "expty": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "expty_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

2. Antigravity / Google AI Assistant

Add to ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "expty": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "expty_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

3. Cursor IDE

Add to .cursor/mcp.json or Cursor Global Settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "expty": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/weyou/expty-mcp.git", "expty"]
    }
  }
}

Testing & Code Quality

pytest -v
ruff check .

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.