Dockhand

[!WARNING] Deprecated and no longer maintained. This project has been superseded by strausmann/mcp-dockhand — a more complete, actively maintained Dockhand MCP server (130+ tools covering the full API, modern Streamable HTTP transport). Please use that instead. This repository is archived for reference only.

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes the Dockhand Docker management REST API as tools for LLMs such as Claude.

Runs as a Docker-hosted SSE server — deploy it once, connect any MCP client over HTTP.

Features

• Manage containers: list, inspect, create, start, stop, restart, remove, get logs
• Manage compose stacks: list, create, start, stop, restart, remove
• Manage Git stacks: list, create, deploy
• Manage images: list, pull, push, remove, vulnerability scan
• Manage volumes: list, create, remove
• Manage networks: list, create, remove
• Bulk operations: batch start/stop/restart/remove across containers, images, volumes, networks, or stacks
• Activity log and schedules: inspect events and scheduled tasks
• All long-running operations return synchronous JSON results (no job-polling needed)

Requirements

• Docker + Docker Compose
• A running Dockhand instance

Deployment

The image is published automatically to ghcr.io/markhaines/dockhand-mcp:latest on every push to main.

Remote server (recommended)

Copy docker-compose.yml to any machine with Docker and run:

DOCKHAND_URL=http://your-dockhand-host:3001 \
DOCKHAND_COOKIE="connect.sid=s%3A..." \
docker compose up -d

No build step — Docker pulls the pre-built image from the registry.

Local

git clone https://github.com/markhaines/dockhand-mcp
cd dockhand-mcp
DOCKHAND_URL=http://localhost:3000 docker compose up -d

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
DOCKHAND_URL	http://localhost:3000	Base URL of your Dockhand instance
DOCKHAND_COOKIE	(empty)	Session cookie for authenticated instances (e.g. connect.sid=s%3A...)
PORT	8000	Port the MCP server listens on
ROOT_PATH	(empty)	Public path prefix when serving behind a reverse proxy sub-path (e.g. /dockhand)

To get your session cookie when authentication is enabled, log in to Dockhand in your browser and copy the connect.sid cookie value from DevTools > Application > Cookies.

Connecting to Claude

Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dockhand": {
      "url": "http://your-server:8000/sse"
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport sse dockhand http://your-server:8000/sse

Available Tools

Category	Tool	Description
Environments	list_environments	List all configured Docker environments
Environments	get_dashboard_stats	Get CPU/memory/container stats
Containers	list_containers	List all containers
Containers	get_container	Inspect a container
Containers	create_container	Create a new container
Containers	start_container	Start a stopped container
Containers	stop_container	Stop a running container
Containers	restart_container	Restart a container
Containers	remove_container	Delete a container
Containers	get_container_logs	Fetch container logs
Bulk	batch_operation	Bulk start/stop/restart/remove
Stacks	list_stacks	List compose stacks
Stacks	create_stack	Create and deploy a stack
Stacks	start_stack	Start a stack
Stacks	stop_stack	Stop a stack
Stacks	restart_stack	Restart a stack
Stacks	remove_stack	Remove a stack
Git Stacks	list_git_stacks	List Git-backed stacks
Git Stacks	create_git_stack	Create a Git-backed stack
Git Stacks	deploy_git_stack	Deploy a Git stack
Images	list_images	List images
Images	pull_image	Pull an image
Images	push_image	Push an image
Images	remove_image	Remove an image
Images	scan_image	Vulnerability scan
Volumes	list_volumes	List volumes
Volumes	create_volume	Create a volume
Volumes	remove_volume	Remove a volume
Networks	list_networks	List networks
Networks	create_network	Create a network
Networks	remove_network	Remove a network
Activity	get_activity	Get container event log
Schedules	list_schedules	List scheduled tasks

Multi-environment support

Every tool accepts an optional env parameter (integer environment ID). Omit it to use the default environment, or pass the ID returned by list_environments to target a specific remote host.

License

MIT