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Portainer MCP

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • A running Portainer 2.39.1 instance (Business Edition or Community Edition)
  • An API token from your Portainer instance
  • An MCP-compatible AI assistant (Claude Desktop, VS Code with Copilot, Cursor, etc.)

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

Choose any of the methods below:

Requires Go 1.24+:

Terminal window
go install github.com/jmrplens/portainer-mcp-enhanced/cmd/portainer-mcp-enhanced@latest

Get a Portainer API Token

Section titled “Get a Portainer API Token”
  1. Log in to your Portainer instance
  2. Go to My Account → API Keys
  3. Click Add API Key, give it a name
  4. Copy the generated token (starts with ptr_)

Configure Your AI Assistant

Section titled “Configure Your AI Assistant”

Edit your Claude Desktop configuration file:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portainer": {
      "command": "/path/to/portainer-mcp-enhanced",
      "args": [
        "-server", "https://your-portainer:9443",
        "-token", "ptr_your_api_token"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Verify It Works

Section titled “Verify It Works”

Once configured, ask your AI assistant:

“What environments are available in Portainer?”

You should see the assistant call manage_environments with action: list_environments and return your environment list.

More Examples

Section titled “More Examples”
"Show me the Docker dashboard for environment 1"
"List all stacks and their status"
"Create a new team called 'developers'"
"Search for nginx Helm charts"
"What's the system status of Portainer?"

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”