stdout-mcp-server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that captures and manages stdout logs through a named pipe system. This server is particularly useful for:

• Capturing logs from multiple processes or applications and making them available for debugging in Cursor IDE.
• Monitoring application output in real-time and providing a MCP interface to query, filter, and analyze logs

How It Works

1. The server creates a named pipe at a specific location (/tmp/stdout_pipe on Unix/MacOS or \.pipestdout_pipe on Windows)

2. Any application can write logs to this pipe using standard output redirection. For example:

your_application | tee /tmp/stdout_pipe # or
your_application > /tmp/stdout_pipe

3. The server monitors the pipe, captures all incoming logs, and maintains a history of the last 100 entries

4. Through MCP tools, you can query, filter, and analyze these logs

System Requirements

Before installing, please ensure you have:

• Node.js v18 or newer

Installation Options

Option 1: Installation in Cursor

1. Open Cursor and navigate to Cursor > Settings > MCP Servers
2. Click on “Add new MCP Server”
3. Update your MCP settings file with the following configuration:

name: stdout-mcp-server
type: command
command: npx stdout-mcp-server

Option 2: Installation in other MCP clients

Installation in other MCP clients

For macOS/Linux:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stdio-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "stdio-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Windows:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-installer": {
      "command": "cmd.exe",
      "args": ["/c", "npx", "stdio-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Usage Examples

Redirecting Application Logs

To send your application’s output to the pipe:

# Unix/MacOS
your_application > /tmp/stdout_pipe

# Windows (PowerShell)
your_application > \.pipestdout_pipe

Monitoring Multiple Applications

You can redirect logs from multiple sources:

# Application 1
app1 > /tmp/stdout_pipe &

# Application 2
app2 > /tmp/stdout_pipe &

Querying Logs

Your AI will use the get-logs tool in your MCP client to retrieve and filter logs:

// Get last 50 logs
get-logs()

// Get last 100 logs containing "error"
get-logs({ lines: 100, filter: "error" })

// Get logs since a specific timestamp
get-logs({ since: 1648675200000 }) // Unix timestamp in milliseconds

Features

• Named pipe creation and monitoring
• Real-time log capture and storage
• Log filtering and retrieval through MCP tools
• Configurable log history (default: 100 entries)
• Cross-platform support (Windows and Unix-based systems)

Named Pipe Locations

• Windows: \.pipestdout_pipe
• Unix/MacOS: /tmp/stdout_pipe

Available Tools

get-logs

Retrieve logs from the named pipe with optional filtering:

Parameters:

• lines (optional, default: 50): Number of log lines to return
• filter (optional): Text to filter logs by
• since (optional): Timestamp to get logs after

Example responses:

// Response format
{
  content: [{
    type: "text",
    text: "[2024-03-20T10:15:30.123Z] Application startedn[2024-03-20T10:15:31.456Z] Connected to database"
  }]
}

License

MIT License