MCP File Tools MCP server

MCP File Tools

Claude sees Настройки — not ???? or Íàñòðîéêè.

MCP server for file operations on text that isn't UTF-8. It detects the encoding from the file's bytes rather than its extension, hands the model UTF-8, and writes back in the original encoding — BOM and CRLF/LF intact, still byte-compatible with whatever legacy tool owns the file.

• 25 encodings, read and write — Cyrillic (CP1251, KOI8-R/U, CP866), Windows-125x, ISO-8859-x, UTF-16 LE/BE, GBK/GB18030 (full list)
• Encoding-aware across the whole tool set — editfile, greptextfiles and searchfiles decode the same way, not just read and write
• Detection you can inspect — detect_encoding reports the charset, a confidence score and any BOM, so garbled text becomes diagnosable
• BOM and line endings are first-class — including on UTF-16, where a naive byte-level rewrite corrupts the file
• Sandboxed — every path, symlink and junction targets included, is checked against the directories you allowed

Built for: Delphi/Pascal units with Cyrillic UI text, VB6 forms, legacy PHP/HTML with localized content, and INI or data files whose encoding you can't tell from the filename.

User: Read config.ini and change the title to "Настройки"
Claude: [read_text_file → cp1251 detected] → [edits UTF-8] → [write_file → back to cp1251]

PRs welcome and merged fast — no CLA, no style review, one-line fixes count. Forked this to fix something? Please send it back instead.

Installation

Claude Code plugin (recommended)

claude plugin marketplace add dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools
claude plugin install mcp-file-tools

Inside a session: /plugin marketplace add … and /plugin install ….

Requires Node.js 18+ on your PATH. The launcher is a Node script and Claude Code does not bundle Node; without it /mcp shows the server as not connected.

First launch downloads the binary for your OS at a pinned version, verifies its SHA-256 and caches it. It is scoped to the folder you have open, so there is nothing to configure. For directories outside the workspace, or a machine without Node, use a manual install.

Coming from a manual install

claude mcp list                                              # find the old file-tools entry
claude mcp remove file-tools
claude plugin marketplace add dimitar-grigorov/mcp-file-tools
claude plugin install mcp-file-tools
# Old binary, once /mcp shows the plugin connected:
#   Windows      Remove-Item "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe"
#   Linux/macOS  rm ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.