Installation

execkit-mcp ships as a prebuilt binary. Pick whichever fits your toolchain.

Zero-install with uv. Nothing to install up front: the MCP client starts execkit through uvx, which fetches the PyPI package execkit-mcp on first use. See Wiring into an agent for the config block. To try it from a terminal:

uvx execkit-mcp --version

Installed:

pip install execkit-mcp      # a wheel; no Rust toolchain needed
cargo install execkit-mcp    # ...or via cargo

A prebuilt-binary installer script for Linux and macOS is attached to each GitHub release.

Building from source instead:

cargo build -p execkit-mcp --release   # binary at target/release/execkit-mcp

Verify the install

execkit-mcp --version
execkit-mcp doctor

doctor reports what is configured and what is missing before you ever wire an agent in: whether an audit destination is set and writable, where the SSH key directory and known_hosts resolve to, whether the Docker daemon is reachable, and whether an operator policy file is loaded. A typical run:

execkit-mcp 0.9.0
[ -- ] binary: /home/you/.cargo/bin/execkit-mcp

[ -- ] audit: off (set EXECKIT_MCP_AUDIT or EXECKIT_MCP_AUDIT_DIR to record + watch activity)
[ ok ] ssh key dir: /home/you/.ssh (override: EXECKIT_MCP_KEY_DIR)
[ -- ] known_hosts: /home/you/.execkit/known_hosts (absent; created on first SSH connect via TOFU)
[ ok ] docker: daemon reachable
[ -- ] policy: off (set EXECKIT_MCP_POLICY_FILE to enable)

Each [warn] or [ -- ] line tells you what to set. None of these are required to start, they just enable optional features (auditing, SSH, Docker).

Requirements on the target

Whatever the transport, the machine or container the agent works on needs a POSIX shell and base64 (part of coreutils and busybox). Checkpoints on SSH and Docker sessions also need git there.

Where the binary lives

cargo install puts it at ~/.cargo/bin/execkit-mcp. If that is not on your MCP client’s PATH, use the full path when you register it (the next page shows how, and execkit-mcp setup fills the absolute path in for you).

Next: Wiring into an agent.