Filesystem

The Filesystem server is one of the seven actively maintained reference servers in the modelcontextprotocol/servers monorepo. It exposes the surface most agents actually need — read, write, move, and search — while refusing any path that resolves outside the roots an operator pre-approved at launch. Distributed as the @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem package on npm. What it does: - Reads and writes files inside allow-listed roots, rejects anything else with a clear error - Lists directory contents with pagination and depth limits to avoid blowing the context window - Globs by pattern ("*.md", "**/*.test.ts") with configurable max matches - Moves and deletes files, with the same allow-list rules applied to both source and destination - Inspects metadata via stat without exposing full parent paths - Rejects symlinks whose real path escapes a configured root Example: Launch with "npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem /workspace /tmp/agent-scratch" and the agent can now read repository files and write scratch output — but a prompt asking for ~/.ssh or C:\Windows returns a path-outside-allow-list error, not contents. Setup: Pass one or more absolute paths as positional arguments. Each path becomes an allow-listed root. No environment variables, no config file, no network dependency. Transport: stdio only. Meant to run locally inside a single client process. Notes: The server normalises Windows paths and handles UNC shares correctly, but glob matching remains case-sensitive on every platform so repositories that rely on case-insensitive tooling should configure their patterns accordingly. Typical uses: local coding agents, documentation generators, and scripted refactors where a full shell tool is too broad a primitive.