Atelier MCP server

Atelier is an offline, headless pixel-art editor for command-line tools and AI agents. Create layered sprites and animations, inspect pixels, and export PNGs, spritesheets, GIFs, APNGs, and TrueType pixel fonts. Documents stay local.

Use it directly from a shell or connect an agent through MCP (Model Context Protocol). Both interfaces expose the same editing tools; no graphical editor or running server is needed for CLI calls.

Drawn by an agent through Atelier's tools. Each is rebuilt byte for byte from the recipe beside it in CI.

Showcase

• Animation showcase — compare models and briefs, view animations, and download replays.
• Frayed

Get started

Atelier builds from source on Linux or macOS with Rust 1.98+ and a native build toolchain. A container image is published for MCP clients; no native binaries are.

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/marmikshah/atelier atelier
atelier --help

To work from a checkout instead, which also pins the Rust version used for development:

git clone https://github.com/marmikshah/atelier.git
cd atelier
cargo install --locked --path crates/atelier

Then follow your first sprite to create a document, draw pixels, and save an image. atelier uninstall removes it again, keeping your documents unless you ask otherwise.

Connect an agent

Agents with shell access can call atelier call TOOL '' directly. For an MCP client, register atelier as a stdio server with no arguments:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atelier": {
      "command": "atelier",
      "env": { "ATELIER_HOME": "/absolute/path/to/your/art" }
    }
  }
}

In Claude Code, claude mcp add atelier -e ATELIER_HOME=/absolute/path/to/your/art -- atelier registers the same server. Then run atelier skills install --for claude (or codex, cursor, all) to give the agent the bundled drawing guides. Running Atelier covers HTTP, Docker, and storage.

Stability

Atelier is at 0.1. master is the current source; releases are dispatched from it and publish the container image, a vX.Y.Z tag, and the MCP Registry entry.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.