dimitar-grigorov/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.
- **45 encodings, read and write** — Cyrillic (CP1251, KOI8-R/U, CP866/855), Windows-125x, ISO-8859-x, DOS code pages, MacRoman, UTF-16/UTF-32, CJK (GBK, Big5, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP/KR) (full list)
- **Encoding-aware across the whole tool set** — edit_file, grep_text_files and search_files 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.
> **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)
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
Tool names change too: mcp__file-tools__* becomes
mcp__plugin_mcp-file-tools_file-tools__*, so update your permission rules, see
Auto-approve tools.
Updating the plugin
Use the full plugin@marketplace id, not the bare name, or turn on auto-update in
/plugin → **Marketplaces**.
Registries and directories
This server is listed in the Official MCP Registry for discovery by any MCP client, and indexed on
Glama, which scores it A
for license, quality and maintenance.
Manual install (other MCP clients, or access outside your workspace)
Download the binary for your platform, then register it with the directories it may access.
| Platform | Release asset | Suggested path |
|----------|---------------|----------------|
| Windows x64 | mcp-file-tools_windows_amd64.exe | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\mcp-file-tools\mcp-file-tools.exe |
| Linux x64 | mcp-file-tools_linux_amd64 | ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools |
| macOS ARM64 | mcp-file-tools_darwin_arm64 | ~/.local/bin/mcp-file-tools |
Windows (PowerShell, not CMD):
Linux / macOS (swap the asset name from the table for your platform):
Go install (all platforms)
Other Clients
For Claude Desktop, VSCode, or Cursor, use the downloaded binary path in your config:
**Claude Desktop** (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):
Windows:
macOS / Linux:
args lists the directories the server may access — as many as you need.
**VSCode / Cursor (Claude Code extension)**
If you already ran claude mcp add --scope user from the installation steps above, the server is already available in VSCode — no extra config needed.
To configure separately for VSCode only:
Alternatively, create a **per-project config** by adding .mcp.json to your project root:
**Note:** type: "stdio" is required here. The VSCode extension does not add the workspace
directory by itself, so args must list every directory you want reachable. Adding one
later means re-running claude mcp add with the full list — it overwrites the previous
config rather than appending.
OpenAI Codex CLI
Codex takes a direct MCP command, so no manual TOML editing is needed.