Pwsh Exec MCP server

pwsh-exec

A minimal, transparent PowerShell 7 MCP for Windows — one tool: run a command, get raw exit code / stdout / stderr back.

pwsh-exec is a minimal, transparent PowerShell 7 MCP server for Windows. It exposes a single tool, runcommand, that runs a command in a fresh pwsh process and returns the raw exitcode, stdout, and stderr — nothing parsed, filtered, or reformatted.

• One tool, three inputs — command, timeout (seconds), optional working_directory.
• Transparent — exit code + stdout + stderr returned verbatim, errors and all.
• Stateless — every call is a new process; no session state persists.
• Bounded — 1–300 s timeout per call; on timeout the whole process tree is killed.
• Windows-hardened — UTF-8 output on any locale, PATH read fresh from the registry, no stdin hangs.
• Not for — persistent shells, admin-elevated tasks, or long-running / background jobs.

It gives any AI agent on Windows a real terminal: you send a command, you get back exactly what the terminal produced.

Status — stable & complete

Feature-complete and stable. One tool, a frozen v1.0.0 API, 38 passing tests, in daily use driving real agent work since April 2026 with no known bugs. Reproducible bugs get fixed; the scope stays intentionally small — it does one thing.

Requirements

• Windows
• PowerShell 7 (pwsh) on PATH — this is the modern cross-platform PowerShell, not the built-in Windows PowerShell 5.1 (powershell.exe). Install it via winget install Microsoft.PowerShell or from the official install guide.
• uv — provides the uvx runner used below.

Install

No clone required — uvx fetches and runs it on demand. Register it with your MCP client (stdio transport):

Any MCP client

Use this as the server's launch command:

uvx pwsh-exec

Claude Desktop

Edit claudedesktopconfig.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pwsh-exec": {
      "command": "cmd",
      "args": ["/c", "uvx", "pwsh-exec"]
    }
  }
}

The cmd /c wrapper is recommended on Claude Desktop: as an Electron app it has no console of its own, and launching a console program directly can leave child processes (pwsh → git and other external .exes) without a working console — flickering windows, lost stdout, PATH lookups failing. cmd.exe acquires the hidden console first and every child inherits it. This is the same pattern Desktop Commander and other Windows MCP servers use.

The tool: run_command

The output is plain text: the exit code first, then labelled stdout and stderr sections (empty ones still show, so the two streams are never ambiguous), then a diagnostic footer with a timestamp and elapsed time.

For example, calling run_command with command: "git status" returns the raw git output, untouched:

exit_code: 0

stdout:
On branch main
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
	modified:   app.py

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

stderr:
(empty)

[2026-06-13 08:43:11 | 625ms]

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.