Pi MCP Adapter

What it does

Pi MCP Adapter lets you connect any MCP server to the Pi coding agent without burning your context window. Instead of registering every tool upfront (which can cost 10k+ tokens per server), it exposes a single mcp proxy tool. The agent discovers and calls tools on demand — servers only start when actually needed.

Key features

• Lazy server startup — MCP servers don't connect until first use; metadata is cached so search/list work offline
• Direct tool promotion — Selectively register specific tools as first-class Pi tools via directTools config
• MCP UI integration — Opens interactive UIs from tool calls in a native macOS window (Glimpse) or browser, with bidirectional agent ↔ UI messaging
• Multi-lifecycle modes — lazy, eager, and keep-alive per server
• Import existing configs — Pull in MCP setups from Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Windsurf, and Codex automatically

Installation

pi install npm:pi-mcp-adapter

Restart Pi after installation, then create ~/.pi/agent/mcp.json with your server definitions.

Claude Desktop: Not a direct Claude Desktop integration — this adapter runs inside Pi. To import your Claude Desktop MCP servers into Pi, add "imports": ["claude-desktop"] to your Pi MCP config.

Supported hosts

Designed exclusively for the Pi coding agent. Supports importing server configs from Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Codex.