Desktop Commander

Desktop Commander lets AI assistants work with files and programs on your computer or a server you own. It's for developers, people handling documents, and server owners who want their assistant to act on a machine and read the results directly.

• Files and code: Assistants can search folders and file contents, move or rename files, make focused code edits, and rewrite whole files.
• Terminal and processes: Run commands, read their output, and interact with SSH sessions, databases, development servers, and other running programs.
• Documents and data: Read and edit Excel workbooks and Word documents, extract PDF text, create or modify PDFs, and analyze CSV, JSON, or Excel data using Python, Node.js, or R.
• File previews: Claude Desktop can display rendered Markdown, images, code, and HTML, with a built-in Markdown editor and text selections the assistant can reference.

The local MCP server is free and open source under the MIT license. It works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and other MCP clients. Tool-call history and audit logs stay on the machine running the server.

Remote MCP requires an account and connects ChatGPT, Claude web, and other remote AI clients to your chosen machine, including access from a phone. Commands still execute on that machine, while the remote client receives the file content and command results it uses. The connection uses authentication and encryption.

Commands run under your user permissions. File-access guardrails aren't a sandbox, and terminal commands can access files outside the configured directories.