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Desktop Commander

Open-source MCP server giving AI clients terminal and file control.

Categories
MCPAgent
Pricing
FREE
Source
Open source
Platforms
CLI
Models
Model-agnostic
Verified
Jun 9, 2026

Desktop Commander is an open-source Model Context Protocol server that lets MCP clients like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code run terminal commands, search the file system, and make surgical diff-based edits. It manages long-running processes, reads and writes files (including Excel and PDF), and turns an AI assistant into a hands-on coding and automation agent on your own machine. Free and MIT-licensed, with one of the larger community followings among MCP servers.

Capabilities 4

What it actually does — grouped by capability family.

  • Terminal / CLI agent (primary capability)
  • Sandboxed code execution (secondary capability)
  • MCP server (primary capability)
  • Trigger-action automation (secondary capability)

Pros & cons

  • Terminal + file control for MCP clients
  • Manages long-running processes
  • Reads/writes Excel and PDF too
  • Works with Claude, Cursor, and VS Code
  • Powerful access = real safety risk
  • CLI-only setup
  • Runs on your local machine only
  • No managed/hosted option

Tags

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