Turtle MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets LLMs draw beautiful turtle graphics in a live tkinter window. Ask Claude to draw stars, fractals, landscapes, flowers, and more — all rendered in real time.

Features

• 14 drawing tools across three categories: geometric, fractals, and nature
• Animated drawing — watch the pen move across the canvas in real time
• Dark theme with deep blue-black background that makes colors pop
• Neon glow effects — every stroke gets a soft halo for a glowing look
• Visible turtle cursor — a cyan arrow follows the pen during drawing
• 10 color palettes: rainbow, sunset, ocean, forest, pastel, jewel, autumn, cherry, earth, neon
• Live tkinter window that persists between tool calls
• Thread-safe architecture: asyncio MCP server + tkinter on a daemon thread
• Pydantic-validated parameters with sensible defaults — every tool works out of the box

Requirements

• Python 3.13+
• uv package manager
• A system with tkinter support (included with standard Python on Windows/macOS; install python3-tk on Linux)

Installation

No manual install needed — uvx handles everything automatically.

To install explicitly:

pip install turtle-mcp

Or with uv:

uv pip install turtle-mcp

Usage

With Claude Code

Add this to your Claude Code MCP settings (claude_desktop_config.json or .mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "turtle_mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["turtle-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask Claude things like:

• "Draw a 7-pointed star with the sunset palette"
• "Draw a fractal tree in autumn with some wind"
• "Draw a Koch snowflake"
• "Draw a landscape at sunset with mountains and a lake"
• "Draw a bouquet of 7 flowers in a vase with the cherry palette"

Standalone

uvx turtle-mcp

Local Development

git clone https://github.com/your-username/turtle-mcp.git
cd turtle-mcp
uv sync
uv run turtle-mcp

Tool Catalog

Geometric (5 tools)

Fractals (4 tools)

Nature (5 tools)

Color Palettes

All tools that accept a palette parameter support these options:

Architecture

turtle_mcp/
├── server.py              # FastMCP server + 14 tool registrations
├── utils.py               # Tk thread management, palettes, drawing helpers
└── drawings/
    ├── geometric.py       # Stars, spirals, mandalas, rosettes, tessellations
    ├── fractals.py        # Trees, Koch, Sierpinski, dragon curves
    └── nature.py          # Flowers, landscapes, celestial scenes, houses

Threading model: The MCP server runs an asyncio event loop on the main thread. A daemon thread hosts the tkinter/turtle event loop. Drawing calls are dispatched to the Tk thread via root.after(0, callback) and synchronized back with threading.Event.

Visual pipeline: Each drawing call clears the canvas, sets the dark background, enables animation (tracer(5, 0), speed(6)), shows the turtle cursor, runs the drawing function, hides the cursor, applies neon glow post-processing to all line strokes, then does a final screen update.

License

MIT