mock-gkn-hpc

A public MCP mock of GKN's internal HPC server for Ansys / Finite Element analysis. It lets external clients exercise the full submit → poll → fetch-artifacts loop against a fake HPC — no real solver, queue, or cluster behind it.

This is a sample MCP server developed alongside the DUCTILE agentic orchestration paper. See the DUCTILE repository or the paper (DOI: TBD) for context.

Install and run

uvx mock-gkn-hpc

Or wire it into your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mock-gkn-hpc": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mock-gkn-hpc"]
    }
  }
}

Job artifacts default to a system tempdir (gettempdir()/mock-gkn-hpc). Override with --runs-dir /custom/path or the MOCK_GKN_HPC_RUNS_DIR env var.

Tool surface

submit_ansys_run mirrors GKN's qansys wrapper:

All parameters round-trip through meta.json, the log banner, and the rendered results.rst.

Input pre-flight check (v0.5.0)

A real solve stops at the first /INPUT or CDREAD whose file it cannot read. The mock has no solver, so submit_ansys_run walks the runscript at submission (parameters, arrays, *DO loops, macros and %...% substitution) and checks every file the deck would read. A job sees:

• its staged directory, the input file's folder (relative paths resolve against it), and
• the cluster's shared /project storage, described by src/mock_gkn_hpc/cluster_files.txt (override with the MOCK_GKN_HPC_CLUSTER_FILES env var, one absolute path per line).

If any file is missing, the job is recorded as failed (its log holds the error) and the tool returns an MCP error with Ansys-style messages, e.g.

Job e816a8ac (runscript) failed during input processing: 6 file(s) read by the deck do not exist.
 *** ERROR ***
 /INPUT failed (runscript line 139). File /project/.../01_inputs/loads/limit_load_2.inp does not exist.

so an agent sees the failure in its context and can fix the deck and resubmit. A successful submission reports input_files_checked. Statements the walker cannot evaluate are skipped, not failed.

Each client can keep its own job store with --runs-dir (useful when several agents run in parallel and should not see each other's jobs in list_jobs).