isabelle-mcp 0.3.0

MCP server bridging AI agents with the Isabelle proof assistant via its LSP/PIDE interface

Isabelle-MCP

MCP server that lets AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, …) drive the Isabelle theorem prover through its LSP/PIDE commands — fully autonomously, with no human in the loop.

Python ≥ 3.12 | v0.1.0 (MVP)

Purpose

This MCP server exists so that Claude / Codex can issue Isabelle LSP commands without any human mediation. The entire Isabelle process is encapsulated behind the MCP tools — it exposes no UI to the user. The agent works by editing .thy/.ML files on disk and calling the tools to evaluate them and query proof states; nobody watches or steers the prover interactively.

This server is not designed for human–AI collaboration (there is no jEdit/VSCode front-end in the picture). It implements a single AI ↔ Isabelle, no-human-in-the-loop model.

⚠️ One agent per server instance. This server holds a single Isabelle session with global mutable state — one set of open documents, one caret/perspective, and one evaluation in flight at a time. It is single-threaded and not concurrency-safe: pointing multiple agents at one instance, or interleaving concurrent requests, corrupts the evaluation/caret/ document state with catastrophic, hard-to-debug results. The server runs over stdio, so each agent already gets its own dedicated server process (and its own isabelle mcp_server) — just don't share one or drive it concurrently.

[!IMPORTANT] No Isabelle patch is needed. Earlier versions required one: the server drove the stock isabelle vscode_server, which lacks the PIDE requests it needs, so the distribution had to be patched. It no longer does. Isabelle-MCP now ships its own Isabelle Scala component — isabelle mcp_server — and registers it with your Isabelle the first time you launch a session. Nothing is compiled on your machine (the component carries a prebuilt jar and declares no_build = true), so site-packages may even be read-only, and no session heap is invalidated.

Requirements: Isabelle2025-2, with isabelle on PATH (or pinned with isabelle-mcp install --isabelle-bin /path/to/Isabelle/bin/isabelle). Isabelle2024 is no longer supported — see the last-isabelle2024-support tag.

To undo the registration: isabelle-mcp uninstall. If you remove the package without it, Isabelle will print ### Missing Isabelle component: … on every command until you run isabelle components -x <the path it names> — harmless, but noisy.

Quick Start

pip install isabelle-mcp      # or: uv tool install isabelle-mcp

# register into Claude Code / Codex (auto-detects whichever is installed):
isabelle-mcp install

For Claude Desktop, register manually instead (~/.config/claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "isabelle": {
      "command": "isabelle-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Description
isabelle_launch	Start (or restart) the prover with the session/logic that fits the work (bare Main is only a minimal fallback); call this first
isabelle_terminate	Terminate the running prover (the MCP server stays up; you can relaunch)
isabelle_evaluate_to	Evaluate the theory up to a line; returns a per-file snapshot of errors / warnings / running command lines
isabelle_evaluation_status	Poll progress of a running evaluation (same snapshot)
isabelle_cancel_evaluation	Cancel a running evaluation
isabelle_hover	Type info and documentation at position
isabelle_definition	Jump to symbol definition
isabelle_local_occurrences	In-file occurrences (definition + uses) of a local entity
isabelle_goal	Proof goals — omit after_text for before/after diff
isabelle_command_output	Prover output messages
isabelle_session_info	Current session info

All positions are 1-indexed. File paths must be absolute.

PIDE tools (goal, command_output) are best-effort wrappers around async PIDE notifications and may time out.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"             # editable install from a checkout
pytest                              # unit tests
pytest -m integration               # requires running Isabelle
python -m mypy src/                 # type checking

Architecture

server.py         FastMCP entry point — tool registration, lifespan
lsp_client.py     JSON-RPC 2.0 client for isabelle mcp_server
tools/            Tool implementations (one file per tool)
utils/            Position conversion, URI handling, HTML parsing
models.py         Pydantic output models

License

See LICENSE.