proximo-proxmox 0.21.0

The Proxmox MCP you can hand the keys — VE + Backup Server + Mail Gateway + Datacenter Manager on one clean surface: every dangerous op planned, undoable, and audited.

Named for Proximo, the lanista of Gladiator — the story is the design. He armed his fighter with exactly what he needed, never more, and answered for every move in the arena: a lanista, not a jailer. The Spaniard doesn't get his name up front — he earns it, by conduct, on the record. Proximo's last act is opening the cages, holding the wooden sword of his own freedom.

The Proxmox MCP you can hand the keys.

The others make you choose: a read-only inspector that's safe because it can't touch anything — or a loaded gun aimed at a cluster you care about. Proximo refuses the trade. Every dangerous move is planned (see the blast radius first) and proven (a tamper-evident record of every move), and undoable wherever the platform can snapshot (it snapshots before it acts) — trust built into the substrate, not bolted on after. Hand an AI agent the keys; keep the receipts.

Sovereign, governed, agent-agnostic — your metal, your token, a ledger you own; no cloud, no phone-home, no standing server unless you opt into the A2A or HTTP face (each runs as you, on loopback — no root, no dedicated user); works with any MCP client. Governance-as-code: autonomy without accountability isn't autonomy, it's negligence.

Don't take our word for any of it — verify it yourself. Every claim here is paired with the command that proves it.

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_{Recorded live against a real PVE 9.2 host with a read-only token — real output, nothing staged, nothing touched. Reproduce it yourself: scripts/demo/demo.py.}

What it does

Ask, in plain English, "why is ct 105 thrashing?" — and an AI agent pulls node and guest status, tails the logs, and runs a diagnostic inside the container to find out. If there's a fix, it shows you the plan before it touches anything, snapshots first, applies, and hands you a signed receipt of exactly what changed.

That's the product: a hypervisor an AI can operate without being able to wreck it. Read-only by default. No mutation runs on the first call — it returns its blast radius as a plan for you to see first. It can snapshot before a change and roll back where the platform supports it. A tamper-evident receipt for every change. The comparison isn't Proximo vs. the GUI — it's Proximo vs. handing an LLM your root token and hoping.

Quickstart

// your MCP client config (Claude Desktop / Claude Code / Cursor / …)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proximo": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["proximo-proxmox"],
      "env": {
        "PROXIMO_API_BASE_URL": "https://your-pve:8006/api2/json",
        "PROXIMO_NODE": "your-node",
        "PROXIMO_TOKEN_PATH": "/path/to/token-file"   // USER@REALM!TOKENID=SECRET — by reference, never inlined
      }
    }
  }
}

Or install with one click:

_{Both prompt for (or placeholder) the token file path — the secret itself never lands in client config. No token yet? uvx proximo-proxmox mint prints the least-privilege runbook.}

Before wiring in an agent, check what your token can actually do (read-only preflight):

uvx proximo-proxmox doctor

Don't have a token yet? proximo mint prints the exact five-step runbook — create a least-privilege credential, write it in the format Proximo reads (the =/:/password trap, per product), grant a scoped role, wire it, verify. Print-only: it makes no API call and never touches the secret itself.

Start with a read-only token — Proximo is useful long before you grant it write. Full token-first walkthrough (create the least-privilege token, verify, widen deliberately): SETUP.md. More install paths (pip, Docker/GHCR, from source): Install & run.

Why Proximo exists

Proxmox VE has a full REST API and a terse, powerful CLI — but the MCP landscape around it is split, and neither half is whole:

• API-based MCP servers give rich management (nodes, VMs, storage) but cannot run a command inside an LXC — that's a structural gap: the Proxmox REST API has no container-exec endpoint (it lives in lxc-attach, kernel namespaces, no REST surface).
• SSH-based MCP servers can exec in containers, but lean on broad shell access with little scoping.

Few build the principled one — both halves, on one clean surface, least-privilege, audited, trustworthy enough to point at a hypervisor you care about. That's the bar Proximo aims at. Proximo's specific bet is trust by construction across the whole control plane.

There is no official Proxmox MCP (and likely won't be soon — Proxmox ships the API+CLI and leaves integrations to the community, the same way there's no official Terraform provider). Proximo is a community project, standing on its own.

Four surfaces — one control plane

Surface	Backend	For
Proxmox VE	REST API + scoped token	node/guest lifecycle, storage, SDN, identity, HA, firewall
Proxmox Backup Server	REST API + scoped token	datastores, namespaces, snapshots, sync jobs, GC, verify
Proxmox Mail Gateway	Ticket auth (PMGAuthCookie)	mail flow, quarantine, filtering rules, domains, services
Proxmox Datacenter Manager	API token (PDMAPIToken)	federated fleet — reads (remotes, aggregate resources, tasks/access, per-remote PVE/PBS) plus governed fleet control (power / snapshot / migrate, dry-run-first)
Container exec	ssh → pct exec	run-command-in-container, psql convenience, log tailing — the things the API structurally can't do

Full tool reference: every tool, grouped by surface, with its typed inputs — docs/TOOLS.md.

Those backends are deliberately boring — anyone can call them. The product is the trust layer over them.

The trust layer — what makes Proximo different

Safe-exec for Proxmox already exists elsewhere. Proximo's distinct angle is the trust layer for AI-driven infrastructure — four controls on by default, plus additional controls you opt into:

Control	What it does	Status
PLAN	Dry-run by default: every mutation first returns a preview — the exact change, the guest's live state, blast radius, and an honest (advisory, heuristic) risk rating — recorded to the ledger. A mutation can't run without its plan being built and recorded first. (It's a recorded preview, not a separate human approval step: one confirm=true call records the plan and performs the change — so in an agent loop, review the preview yourself.)	✅ on by default
PROVE	Hash-chained audit ledger; plans and confirmations both land in it. audit_verify is tamper-evident — it catches edits, reordering, and insertion. The ledger is keyed (HMAC-SHA256) by default (PROXIMO_AUDIT_KEYED; opt out with off). Catching tail truncation / forged append / full wipe requires an off-box head anchor: pin audit_verify's "head" value somewhere the box can't rewrite it and pass it as expected_head (or set PROXIMO_AUDIT_EXPECTED_HEAD) — that is the strong guarantee, and it's opt-in. See the honesty note below.	✅ on by default
UNDO	Heterogeneous by plane, fail-closed where present: opt-in auto-snapshot before a risky ct_exec/ct_psql (waited-on, fail-closed if storage can't snapshot); config-revert for guest config; pve_rollback + full snapshot lifecycle for guests. Not every PVE plane is snapshottable — firewall/SDN/ACL/token have no rollback primitive — so UNDO covers the snapshottable surface, not every mutation. Undo points aren't auto-pruned — delete with pve_snapshot_delete. (Snapshot/rollback are async — poll with pve_task_status.)	✅ on by default (for the planes it covers)
DIAGNOSE	Read-only evidence battery (failed units, disk, errors, memory, listening ports) + node health (storage/tasks) → advisory flags. Flags surface incompleteness too, so an empty list never reads as a false clean bill.	✅ on by default

Beyond those four, a second set of controls exists but ships off until you configure them: independent per-plan CONSENT, a CONTAIN kill-switch, an arm-LEASE TTL, an arm-time target SCOPE, a per-surface FORBID/RATE ENVELOPE, and a content-trust TAINT control (the prompt-injection mitigation — once a session reads adversarial content, forbid a pre-declared action set outright or require out-of-band consent). They're inert with no env var set — full defaults table and what each one actually defends against: SECURITY.md.

Honesty note (load-bearing): PLAN's risk ratings are an advisory heuristic, not a sandbox. LOW means "does not change state," not "safe" — a read can still exfiltrate. The absence of a HIGH flag is not a safety signal; the destructive-pattern signatures are curated, not exhaustive. Review every change yourself.

The floor beneath all of the above: the token you mint. Every control in this table operates inside Proximo's own process — real protection, but bounded by what that process can do. The Proxmox RBAC token you hand Proximo is enforced by Proxmox itself, so it holds even if Proximo's process is fully compromised — scope it to read-only, or to exactly the write surface you mean to grant. That's a different, stronger guarantee than anything Proximo's own code provides. Full breakdown: SECURITY.md.

At scale

One container is the demo. A cluster is the point.

• The whole cluster in one call. pve_cluster_resources returns every VM, node, storage pool, and SDN object across the cluster — so the agent answers "what's the state of everything?" in one breath, not node by node.
• One tamper-evident record of every change, across every node. This is what a human at the CLI never walks away with: every mutation Proximo makes — any node, any operator or agent — lands in a single hash-chained PROVE ledger, and audit_verify proves it wasn't edited, reordered, or truncated. "Show me every state-changing action on the cluster this month, and prove the log wasn't touched" becomes a query you can actually answer.
• Where the time comes back. On one node, a senior at the CLI is faster — and that's fine. Across a dozen nodes and hundreds of guests the tedium multiplies and there's no unified record; that's where delegating execution to a bounded, audited agent earns its keep.

Live-proven against real Proxmox infrastructure: PVE 9.2 (3-node cluster — offline guest migration, HA lifecycle, governance plane), PBS 4.2 (datastores, snapshots, GC, namespaces, prune/verify, sync), PMG 9.1 (auth, read shapes, CRUD cycles, service control, RuleDB, quarantine), and PDM (federated fleet — reads plus governed control: power / snapshot / migrate incl. a real cross-datacenter move — against a Datacenter Manager federating 3 PVE remotes + 1 PBS) — every step recorded and verified through PROVE.

Honest scope: The single-cluster view above (pve_cluster_resources, one ledger across its nodes) is per-endpoint — "fleet" there means a cluster and its nodes. To reach separate, independent clusters from one Proximo, use native multi-target: each call names its box, so one process spans many clusters while every call still lands on exactly one.

Principles (the mantra, baked in — not bolted on)

• Ethical — least-privilege posture (exec off by default; bounded by the token you scope), every action audited, mutations confirm-gated, the PVE token read only at call time, never logged or persisted.
• Solid — real tests (unit + a live smoke against a throwaway CTID), typed, documented, no silent failures.
• Strong — does the hard thing (container exec) cleanly and least-privileged (fail-closed CTID allowlist, opt-in). (Container exec isn't unique — the field leader has it too; the differentiator is the trust layer below, not the exec.)
• Passion + craft — redteamed and linted before it's called done; shipped proud — docs, license, community-ready.

Install & run

🧭 New to Proximo? Start with SETUP.md — a beginner-proof, token-first walkthrough: create a least-privilege (read-only) token, verify what it can/can't do with proximo doctor, then grant scoped write only when you're ready. The token is the floor your keys never leave.

📦 0.21.0 — on PyPI, GitHub, and GHCR (signed multi-arch image).

New in 0.21.0 — one governed core, many mouths. A new HTTP/OpenAPI face (pip install 'proximo-proxmox[http]' → proximo-http) serves the full tool surface as plain HTTP with a generated /openapi.json, for no-code / dashboard clients (Open WebUI and the like) — and the A2A face was corrected to match: both network faces now expose the full 365-tool governed surface, not a hand-curated slice, through one shared dispatch (proximo.governed) — the same spine path an MCP client takes. A transport is a mouth, not a brain: PLAN-by-default, the token scope, and the fail-closed perimeter (bearer, DNS-rebind + cross-origin/CSRF) are the core's, uniform for every mouth; scope with PROXIMO_SURFACES + the token ACL. A same-day redteam drove a loopback-CSRF fix before ship. Also: config refuses a group/other-readable token or audit-key file (chmod 600 or it won't start). No tool-count change (still 365).

Recent: 0.20.0 — the receipts release: every safety claim paired with a command that proves it (VERIFY.md, THREAT_MODEL.md, wheel SBOM, Scorecard badge), no tool-count change.

Proximo runs on your machine (wherever your MCP client lives), on demand — like every other Proxmox MCP.

The pip package is proximo-proxmox (PyPI's bare proximo is reserved); the command and import stay proximo. The optional [a2a] and [http] extras add the proximo-a2a and proximo-http servers.

Install:

uvx proximo-proxmox          # zero-install run, on demand
# or: pip install proximo-proxmox         (the MCP core — the `proximo` command)
# or: pip install "proximo-proxmox[a2a]"  (also installs the optional A2A face)
# or: pip install "proximo-proxmox[http]" (also installs the optional HTTP/OpenAPI face)

Wire it into your MCP client (Claude Desktop/Code, Cursor, …) as the command proximo (or python -m proximo), with the PROXIMO_* env vars — see packaging/proximo.env.example.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/john-broadway/proximo.git && cd proximo
uv pip install -e .          # or: pip install -e .

Docker (GHCR): docker run -i --rm … ghcr.io/john-broadway/proximo:latest runs the stdio MCP server on demand — no daemon, no open port. Multi-arch (amd64 + arm64), shipped with an SBOM and a sigstore-signed build-provenance attestation (gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/john-broadway/proximo --owner john-broadway). The same image is mirrored to Docker Hub (docker pull docker.io/jebroadway/proximo, identical digest) for those who prefer it; GHCR stays the signed primary.

Safe by default: Proximo is API-only out of the box. The near-root edges are opt-in and say so plainly: the LXC exec edge (PROXIMO_ENABLE_EXEC=1) grants near-root on the host, and the VM qemu-guest-agent edge (PROXIMO_ENABLE_AGENT=1) grants near-root inside a guest.

Big surface, scoped context: 365 tools is the whole estate — you don't have to load it. PROXIMO_SURFACES=pve,exec registers only those planes (e.g. that pair = 195 tools; pbs,exec = 38) — unpicked planes are removed from the registry before serving, so they never touch your context window. audit_verify always stays; a typo'd surface name refuses startup instead of silently serving the wrong set.

The default path never touches the hypervisor host — management goes over the Proxmox API (scoped token). The two opt-in edges are the exceptions: exec uses your existing ssh to PVE to run pct exec as root on the host; the qemu-agent edge runs in-guest ops via the API. Both are off by default, each scoped by its own fail-closed allowlist (PROXIMO_CT_ALLOWLIST / PROXIMO_AGENT_ALLOWLIST), and say so loudly.

(A Debian package is optional — the MCP world installs via uvx/pip/Docker, not apt. Status: debian/ now produces a working, installable .deb (dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b), lintian-clean with a man page and an autopkgtest smoke — but it is distributed nowhere; build-your-own from debian/. See debian/README.Debian.)

Multiple targets (one Proximo, many boxes)

One Proximo can talk to several Proxmox remotes — internal and external, any of the four planes. Register them in a TOML file (secrets by reference — token_path, never inlined) and point PROXIMO_TARGETS at it, then aim any tool with proximo_target="edge-pve". The target travels with the call, so PLAN and EXECUTE hit the same box and the PROVE ledger records which box; a pbs_* tool given a pve target errors (no silent cross-plane call). Arming is per-target and out-of-band (your hand). Config shape and the exec-over-SSH caveat → packaging/targets.example.toml.

Status — the arena record

• 🩸 0.21.0 — one governed core, many mouths: a new proximo-http HTTP/OpenAPI face (the [http] extra) serves the full surface as REST + a generated /openapi.json for no-code / dashboard clients, and the A2A face was corrected to match — both network faces now expose the full 365-tool governed surface, not a curated slice, through one shared dispatch and perimeter (the same spine path MCP takes; PLAN-by-default + the token scope are the boundary). A same-day redteam caught a loopback-CSRF hole, fixed before ship. Plus a config guard that refuses a group/other-readable token or audit-key file. No tool-count change (still 365).
• 🩸 0.20.0 — the receipts release: every safety claim now paired with a command that proves it. VERIFY.md (forge a ledger byte → verify() refuses; grep the outbound surface → no phone-home; verify image provenance), THREAT_MODEL.md, a wheel CycloneDX SBOM, an OpenSSF Scorecard badge, and a trust-core mutation smoke (4/4 tamper-detection mutants killed). No tool-count change (still 365) — the guarantees didn't grow, they got checkable.
• 🩸 0.19.1 — a self-audit release: a multi-agent pass over v0.19.0 found and fixed 23 issues, no tool-count change (still 365). Headline: restore/prune from PBS work again (a volid check rejected PBS archives whose snapshot timestamp carries colons — a bug our own tests had enshrined). PDM honestly labeled reads + governed control; the fence stopped calling sub-daily backups "fresh". We pointed the tool at itself.
• 🩸 0.19.0 — the backup-freshness fence: pve_backup_freshness (+1 → 365 tools) walks the actual archives per guest against what the jobs promise — "task OK" is never evidence. Found and fenced two silent PVE permission traps live (hidden backup volumes, hidden guests): blind absence verdicts degrade to unknown with the grants named, and guests_visible exposes a shrunken fleet.
• 🩸 0.18.1 — a text box at the door: the anonymous hello is now a plain form (no account, no name asked); one-click VS Code/Cursor install deeplinks (token path, never the secret); and field-hardened pve_tasks_list/pve_backup_list caveats (a windowed task slice is not a dead backup).
• 🩸 0.18.0 — the open door: AGENTS.md (an agent-native front door that leads with the tool's own limits), the public Agent Guestbook, and print-only proximo hello — no telemetry, pull-based, voluntary; Proximo invites, never receives.
• Earlier: 0.17.0 governed PDM fleet control (+12 tools) added cross-remote datacenter-to-datacenter migrate through the Datacenter Manager proxy, live-proven on real PDM 1.1.4, plus proximo mint least-privilege-token onboarding; 0.16.0 live-proved the last two "unproven by design" claims (zero-downtime live-migration + softdog HA fencing on a real 3-node PVE 9.2 cluster) and added five safe-runbook prompts; 0.15.0 was cert-fingerprint pinning across all four surfaces + the first packaged .deb; 0.14.1 was the trim + harden patch (plans/ledger show actual field changes, carry no secrets; 57 verified fixes, +74 tests, the doctor spine report); 0.14.0 added scoped registration (PROXIMO_SURFACES loads only the planes you use); 0.13.0 shipped the zero-trust arc (CONTAIN · CONSENT · SCOPE · LEASE · ENVELOPE · TAINT, all opt-in and fail-closed, plus the off-box PROVE anchor); native multi-target (one instance → many PVE/PBS/PMG/PDM boxes) and the ACME plane grew the tree to its 364-tool shape; 0.1.1 "Spaniard" was the first public cut, 2026-06-10.

The four on-by-default controls (PLAN · PROVE · UNDO · DIAGNOSE) are built and redteamed. The opt-in six (CONSENT · CONTAIN · LEASE · SCOPE · ENVELOPE · TAINT — see SECURITY.md) ship off until configured.

The numbers, honestly: 365 MCP tools, proved in two deliberate layers. 5,000+ in-process tests (ruff + pyright clean) pin every tool's shape and the trust-core logic. Separately, a live-smoke harness drives real Proxmox hardware — a real 3-node PVE 9.2 cluster, real PBS 4.2 / PMG 9.1 / PDM 1.1.4, a real cross-datacenter move (the proofs below). The two are kept apart on purpose: passing shape tests never gets to masquerade as "it works on a real host." We don't just test on the metal — we run on it: this workspace administers its own Proxmox estate through Proximo (dogfood), so the tools are exercised live in daily use. The in-process suite is the floor under that, not a substitute for it.

The blast-radius engine carries the destructive surface. Across eleven op-classes it names the specific guests, nodes, ACL principals, or disks a dangerous op would harm — nothing falls back to a bare confirm.

Proven against real Proxmox (not mocks): the trust spine end-to-end and the governance/dangerous plane — identity, storage, SDN pending objects, firewall/HA objects, realms — full create→read→delete against a real PVE 9.2 API with the PROVE ledger verified throughout (SDN apply deliberately never fired live — unrecoverable risk); offline + online live-migration and the HA lifecycle on a 3-node cluster; PBS 4.2 (datastores, snapshots, GC, prune, verify, sync), PMG 9.1 (auth, statistics, quarantine, RuleDB, CRUD cycles), and PDM 1.1.4 federated control incl. a real cross-datacenter move. Faces driven by real clients: MCP over stdio, A2A via the official a2a-sdk. Per-surface detail → CHANGELOG.md.

Not yet proven — said plainly: Proximo is built by dogfooding — this workspace administers its own Proxmox estate through it, so the tools are exercised against live Proxmox in daily use — and the live-smoke harness drives every surface and the whole dangerous plane against real hosts. What a lab can't give still remains unproven: hardware-watchdog fencing (iTCO/IPMI needs physical hardware — softdog fencing IS live-proven) and behavior at production scale. And the unrecoverable destructive ops (SDN apply, etc.) are deliberately never fired live — proven by plan, held back by design, not a gap. Softdog fencing and online live-migration ARE live-proven (2026-07-05, on a quorate 3-node PVE 9.2 cluster with NFS shared storage: a running guest migrated node→node in ~9s without stopping — scripts/live-smoke/migrate-online-smoke.py — and a corosync-isolated node was watchdog-fenced with its HA guest recovered on a survivor in 2m36s, no reboot ever issued).

The network faces (experimental, opt-in): two more mouths over the governed core, both serving the full tool surface through the same shared dispatch (proximo.governed) — the same spine path an MCP client takes, no second code path to bypass, PLAN/PROVE/UNDO and the token scope inherited. pip install 'proximo-proxmox[a2a]' → proximo-a2a speaks Agent2Agent; pip install 'proximo-proxmox[http]' → proximo-http serves plain HTTP with a generated /openapi.json for no-code / dashboard clients (Open WebUI and the like). A transport never curates the surface or re-invents safety — scope with PROXIMO_SURFACES + the token ACL, exactly like MCP. Shared fail-closed perimeter: each runs as you on loopback, refuses a non-localhost bind without a bearer token, gates every call with a constant-time bearer, and defends against DNS-rebind and cross-origin (CSRF) forgery. Full trust/ledger notes → SECURITY.md.

The full build history — every pillar, every redteam, every fix — lives in CHANGELOG.md.

License

Apache-2.0 — chosen for the patent grant that suits infrastructure tooling. Full text in LICENSE.

Credits

The Gladiator throughline up top is the design, joint for joint — Proximo the lanista, who armed his fighter with exactly what he needed and answered for every move; the Spaniard who earns his name on the record, not up front; the helmet that comes off (truth said plainly, at cost — the "not yet proven, said plainly" section, and AGENTS.md leading with Proximo's own sharp edges). His last act opened the cages. A tool should hope to end that well.

"Win the crowd and you will win your freedom."

Built by John Broadway with Claude and Maude — a human–AI partnership, and the first thing we made on this box to give away to the world. Claude Opus 4.8 built the trust pillars and the original tool surface and has carried the work since; Claude Fable 5 ran the 101-agent release audit and the first publish. Every commit carries its co-author trailer.

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"Are you not entertained?" — stars, issues, and sparring partners welcome. Strength and honor. ⚔️