nimbus-mcp

MCP server that lets AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop) build, validate, run, and analyze Nimbus BCI pipelines — and (explicitly confirmed) drive live EEG streaming sessions — through your local Nimbus backend.

Install

pip install nimbus-mcp   # or: uvx nimbus-mcp

(Also installable from the repo: pip install -e nimbus-studio/mcp.)

Requirements

• A Nimbus backend running locally: the desktop app, or the dev server (cd nimbus-studio/backend-py && python -m nimbus_backend.server.app) with DEBUG=1.
• The backend started with MCP_LOCAL_KEY=<some-secret> (never set this on Fly — it is refused there).

Configure the backend

Desktop/dev env (e.g. backend-py/data/.env or the dev shell):

MCP_LOCAL_KEY=choose-a-long-random-string
DEBUG=1   # dev server only; the desktop app qualifies automatically

When enabling MCP_LOCAL_KEY on a machine connected to an untrusted network, also set HOST=127.0.0.1 on the backend — the default bind is 0.0.0.0, so the key would otherwise be accepted from the LAN.

Run the server

cd nimbus-studio/mcp
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[test]"
NIMBUS_MCP_KEY=choose-a-long-random-string python -m nimbus_mcp

Env vars: NIMBUS_API_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:8080), NIMBUS_MCP_KEY (must match MCP_LOCAL_KEY), NIMBUS_EXPORT_DIR (default ~/nimbus-exports).

Claude Code

claude mcp add nimbus -- <path-to-mcp-venv>/bin/python -m nimbus_mcp \
  --env NIMBUS_MCP_KEY=choose-a-long-random-string

Cursor / Claude Desktop (stdio)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nimbus": {
      "command": "<path-to-mcp-venv>/bin/python",
      "args": ["-m", "nimbus_mcp"],
      "env": { "NIMBUS_MCP_KEY": "choose-a-long-random-string" }
    }
  }
}

Tools (20)

Discovery: list_nodes, get_node_schema, list_templates, get_template, list_datasets Build: validate_pipeline, validate_node_config Run: run_pipeline (non-blocking), get_execution, list_executions, get_results, cancel_execution Artifacts: list_artifacts, download_artifact, export_python Live: list_devices, test_device, start_stream (needs confirm=true), stream_status, stop_stream

Safety

start_stream refuses to run without confirm=true — it connects an EEG device and starts a live session on a human. The X-MCP-Key path is machine-local only (never accepted on Fly deployments).