Helmdeck

Name: Helmdeck
Author: tosin2013

by tosin2013version 0.29.10i★ –iRuns on your computer

Registry nameio.github.tosin2013/helmdeck

Install

Overview

Description from the maker (original English)

Self-hosted MCP server: sandboxed browser, desktop, vision, code-edit packs for any agent.

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

These three are never merged into one score: opinions, measurements and popularity are different things.

User voiceiNo reviews yetReviews open together with accounts in a later step
Our basic checksi1 of 1 passedChecked from public information; code not scanned yet
UsageiNot measured yet★ –

What you can do with it

We have not written a plain-language summary for this one yet. Below are the facts we read from the registry.

Connection: Runs on your computer
Transport: stdio
Category: Web & browsers
You need to fill in: HELMDECK_URL, HELMDECK_TOKEN

Install

Pick the AI app you use, then copy the settings.

Before you install

Basic checks: 1 of 1 passed
Runs on your computer with your user’s permissions (files, network, apps).
You fill in yourself: HELMDECK_URL, HELMDECK_TOKEN

Values marked secret are keys to your account. Never share them or paste them into a chat.

You need

npmNode.js installed (for the npx command)

Which app do you use?

ClaudeClaude CodeCursorVS CodeChatGPT

Pick your app above. We remember it, so next time the button says “Install in …”.

Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit Config, and paste this into claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "helmdeck": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@helmdeck/mcp-bridge"
      ],
      "env": {
        "HELMDECK_URL": "your-value",
        "HELMDECK_TOKEN": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Run this in your terminal

claude mcp add helmdeck --env HELMDECK_URL=your-value --env HELMDECK_TOKEN=your-value -- npx -y @helmdeck/mcp-bridge

Fill in the empty values before running it.

Open in Cursor

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "helmdeck": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@helmdeck/mcp-bridge"
      ],
      "env": {
        "HELMDECK_URL": "your-value",
        "HELMDECK_TOKEN": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

Open in VS Code

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .vscode/mcp.json in your project

{
  "servers": {
    "helmdeck": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@helmdeck/mcp-bridge"
      ],
      "env": {
        "HELMDECK_URL": "your-value",
        "HELMDECK_TOKEN": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

This one runs on your computer, and ChatGPT can only connect to servers on the internet. Pick another app.

Your choice stays on this device in a cookie; no account needed.

Values you fill in

HELMDECK_URL required env
Base URL of your helmdeck control plane (e.g. http://localhost:3000 for a local Compose install, or your reverse-proxied https URL)
HELMDECK_TOKEN secret required env
JWT bearer token minted from your helmdeck control plane. Generate with: curl -X POST $HELMDECK_URL/api/v1/auth/login -d '{"username":"admin","password":"..."}'

These settings are generated from the maker’s registry entry. If the README says otherwise, follow the README.

What it can do

Runs on your computer; the tool list appears in your AI app after you install it.

Basic checksi

We check information anyone can see; we have not read the code. Checks that do not apply are left out of the count. · Checked Nov 6, 2026

✓ Pass
Maker matches the repo
The registry name was verified with the GitHub account tosin2013, which owns the repo
… Not checked yet
Still maintained
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
… Not checked yet
Has a licence
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
– Not applicable
Endpoint responds
This one runs on your computer; there is no internet endpoint
– Not applicable
Sign-in with OAuth
Runs on your computer and uses local settings instead
… Not checked yet
No hidden instructions in tool descriptions
Runs on your computer; we can only read tool lists from internet endpoints

Compared with others in Web & browsersi

More stars than 0% of the other 878 servers in this category
Published to the registry more recently than 17% of the other 878 servers in this category
Basic checks equal to or better than 100% of the other 878 servers in this category

Compared with every active server in this category in the registry. Stars count only when the publisher owns the repo.

Common questions

Is Helmdeck safe?

It passed 1 of 1 applicable basic checks. We have not read the code. Before adding a key or token, see what access the server asks for and use a key with only the permissions you need.

What keys or codes does it need?

You need to fill in: HELMDECK_URL, HELMDECK_TOKEN

Does it run on my computer or in the cloud?

It runs on your computer. Your AI app starts it when needed, and data does not pass through the maker’s servers (unless it calls an online service itself).

Is it still maintained?

The GitHub repo last changed –, and the latest version (0.29.10) reached the registry 5 months ago.

Which apps can use it?

Apps that support MCP, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code. You also need Node.js, Docker on your computer.

What can I use instead?

In the same category: Browser Use, Chrome DevTools MCP, MCP Server Browser

Alternatives

Servers in the same category from other makers, sorted by stars.

Reading a card:★ GitHub starsiThree pillars: reviews · checks · usageiUpdated = latest version published to the registryi

Browser Use

by browser-use

Lets AI do web tasks for you, such as filling forms, searching and extracting data, in the maker’s cloud browsers or on your computer.

Computer or cloud★ 120,087MITUpdated 17 days ago

Install

Chrome DevTools MCP

by ChromeDevTools

Lets AI use Chrome’s developer tools to inspect pages, find what makes them slow and spot errors. Made by the Chrome DevTools team.

Runs on your computer★ 54,821Apache-2.0Updated 15 days ago

Install

MCP Server Browser

by bytedance

MCP server for browser use access

Runs on your computer★ 39,550Apache-2.0Updated 14 months ago

Install

README from the maker

Open the README

Copied from the maker’s repo as written. PopNx MCP has not reviewed or endorsed it. HTML, images and scripts are removed. Links lead off this site.

helmdeck

Today's helmdeck install ran a full 6-step code-edit loop (clone, read, patch,

test, commit, push) on gpt-oss-120b for $0.07. The same loop on Cursor

or Claude Code direct via Sonnet would have cost $0.30+. Same outcome,

~5× cheaper — and the "expensive" stack isn't even the most expensive option.

Workflow	Frontier-model approach	Helmdeck (gpt-oss-120b)
Browser scrape + GitHub comment	$0.25 (Anthropic Computer Use)	$0.005
Code edit loop (6 steps)	$0.35 (Cursor / Aider)	$0.07
Multi-step browser test	$0.20 (Browser-use NL)	$0.03
PDF → structured Markdown	$1.00 (naive Sonnet vision)	$0.003

Most browser agents require GPT-4o or Claude Sonnet to work reliably.

Helmdeck is built for the other 99% of deployments — **local 7B models,

air-gapped environments, and teams that can't send credentials to a

cloud API.** It wraps every browser, desktop, git, and code action

into a single typed JSON call that even a small model can fill in correctly.

The numbers above are the consequence: when packs absorb the work the

LLM would otherwise burn tokens rediscovering, cheap or local models do

agentic work that frontier-model APIs charge 10× more for.

A self-hosted, containerized platform for AI agents, exposed as Capability Packs — schema-validated, one-shot JSON tools — and native MCP. The defining metric is ≥90% pack success on 7B–30B-class open-weight models, something no frontier-targeting competitor is optimizing for.

📊 Full per-task comparison with reproduction recipe at https://helmdeck.dev/explanation/why-helmdeck. These are one maintainer's findings; we welcome community reproductions.

Why this exists

Smart models thrive on bash and a README. Weak models stall on open-ended interfaces. Helmdeck closes that gap by hiding browser sessions, desktop actions, credentials, and multi-step workflows behind single typed REST / MCP calls.

Three audiences specifically:

Self-hosted AI teams who can't leave their VPC and need MCP-native infra that doesn't phone home.
The LocalLLaMA / Ollama crowd running 7B–30B models — pack contracts keep small models reliable where open-ended tool surfaces fail.
Security-sensitive orgs who need agents to log into SaaS apps without the model ever seeing a credential (vault-backed placeholder tokens + MCP-level audit).

Status

v0.22.0 shipped — *agents that work on free models, with memory.* The release closes ADRs 047–050:

Pipeline routing + routing memory (ADR 047) — the helmdeck.route meta-pack recommends the best pack/pipeline for an intent (with structured gap warnings when nothing fits), backed by per-caller learned defaults surfaced through the helmdeck://routing-guide and helmdeck://my-defaults MCP resources and a Routing Memory management UI.
Memory write surface + OpenClaw bridge (ADR 048) — helmdeck.memory_store persists durable user facts (read back via helmdeck://my-memory), an optional embedding sidecar powers OpenClaw's memory_search, and a QMD corpus bridge exposes helmdeck memory to OpenClaw.
Intent decomposition (ADR 049) — helmdeck.plan turns a multi-action prompt into an ordered, pipeline-aware step plan plus a rewritten_prompt.
LLM context manager (ADR 050) — internal/llmcontext compacts catalog-heavy prompts to fit small-model context budgets (tiered per-model budgets, cascading select + lexical rank, optional two-pass filter), surfaced through helmdeck://context-budgets and helmdeck://my-plans.

57 capability packs ship in the control-plane binary (47 without an AI gateway configured), alongside 21 built-in pipelines, a community pack marketplace (helmdeck pack install ), and operator-supplied cmd.* subprocess packs. Earlier headline features remain: end-to-end content chaining (image.generate auto-feeds podcast/slides/blog covers), the helmdeck://image-models MCP resource, image-mode install (./scripts/install.sh --image-mode), and the Pack Test Runner UI. Helmdeck is published to the official MCP Registry as io.github.tosin2013/helmdeck for one-line install in registry-aware clients. Phases 1–6.5 are complete; the current milestone is v1.0 — Kubernetes & GA (Phase 7), with backlog materialised as GitHub issues tagged good first issue and help wanted.

49 ADRs in docs/adrs/ — every architectural decision with PRD back-references
Task breakdown in docs/TASKS.md — ~85 tasks across 8 phases with critical path
GitHub milestones in docs/MILESTONES.md — drop-in issue checklists with current ship state
Pack reference in docs/PACKS.md — every shipped pack's input/output contract

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/tosin2013/helmdeck

cd helmdeck ./scripts/install.sh

That's it. The script runs preflight checks (docker, node ≥20, go ≥1.26, make, openssl, curl) with platform-aware install hints, generates fresh secrets into deploy/compose/.env.local (chmod 600), builds the Management UI bundle, the Go binaries, and the browser sidecar image, brings the Compose stack up, and prints the URL plus a freshly generated admin password.

✓ helmdeck is up

URL: http://localhost:3000 Username: admin Password:

Useful flags:

./scripts/install.sh --reset — tear down, regenerate secrets, reinstall (new admin password)
./scripts/install.sh --no-build — skip build steps, just bring the stack up
./scripts/install.sh --help — full flag reference

Or via make: make install.

Connect a client

A running stack is just the platform — the value is packs called by an agent. Wire one of the supported MCP clients to your fresh install:

Client	Status	Setup guide
OpenClaw	✅ validated end-to-end	`docs/integrations/openclaw.md`
Claude Code	🟡 documented	`docs/integrations/claude-code.md`
Claude Desktop	🟡 documented	`docs/integrations/claude-desktop.md`
Gemini CLI	🟡 documented	`docs/integrations/gemini-cli.md`
Hermes Agent	🟡 documented	`docs/integrations/hermes-agent.md`

Once a client is connected, work through the pack-demo-playbook.md — 20+ copy-pasteable prompts that exercise every pack. The per-pack reference covers each pack's contract, error codes, and chained workflows.

Advanced: manual setup

If you'd rather drive each step yourself instead of running the install script:

# 1. Build the Management UI bundle (needs Node 20+)

make web-deps && make web-build

2. Build the control-plane binary with the UI embedded

make build

3. Run the control plane with admin credentials

HELMDECK_JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \ HELMDECK_VAULT_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \ HELMDECK_ADMIN_PASSWORD=changeme \ ./bin/control-plane

Or use the Compose stack directly (control plane + Garage object store + bundled init):

cp deploy/compose/.env.example deploy/compose/.env.local

…edit deploy/compose/.env.local and fill in real secrets…

docker compose -f deploy/compose/compose.yaml --env-file deploy/compose/.env.local up -d

Logging in to the Management UI

The login endpoint accepts a static admin password set via the HELMDECK_ADMIN_PASSWORD env var on the control plane process. Suitable for the dev / single-node Compose tier; OIDC SSO for production deployments lands in a later phase.

Setting	Default	Override
Username	`admin`	`HELMDECK_ADMIN_USERNAME` env var
Password	(none — UI login disabled)	`HELMDECK_ADMIN_PASSWORD` env var (required)
Session length	12 hours	Hardcoded in `internal/api/auth_login.go`

To change the password: stop the control plane, set HELMDECK_ADMIN_PASSWORD to the new value, and restart. There is no in-UI "change password" flow today — the password is managed out-of-band by whichever orchestrator runs the control plane (Compose, systemd, Kubernetes Secret, etc.).

If `HELMDECK_ADMIN_PASSWORD` is unset, the login endpoint returns 503 login_disabled. The control plane still runs and the API still works — operators can mint a JWT directly via the CLI:

./bin/control-plane -mint-token=alice -mint-token-scopes=admin -mint-token-ttl=12h

The minted token can be pasted into any tool that speaks Authorization: Bearer .

Production note: the static-password path uses constant-time comparison so it's safe against timing attacks, but it's still a shared secret that has to be rotated by hand. For production deployments with multiple operators, OIDC SSO via your existing identity provider is the right answer — see the Phase 6 follow-up roadmap.

Architecture at a glance

Sidecar pattern — browser runs in its own container, never embedded in the agent (ADR 001)
Golang control plane — single static binary, distroless image, embeds the React UI (ADR 002)
Capability Packs — the primary product surface; user-authorable via Go or WASM (ADRs 003, 012, 024)
OpenAI-compatible AI gateway — Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Ollama, Deepseek with encrypted keys + fallback routing (ADR 005)
MCP server registry — stdio/SSE/WebSocket transports; built-in MCP server auto-derived from the pack catalog (ADR 006)
Credential vault — AES-256-GCM with placeholder-token injection; agents never see secrets (ADR 007)
Dual-tier deployment — Docker Compose for dev/single-node, Helm chart for Kubernetes production (ADRs 009, 010, 011)
First-class MCP clients — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, OpenClaw, Gemini CLI via a single shared helmdeck-mcp bridge binary (ADRs 025, 030)
Bundled object store — Garage ships in the Compose stack as the default artifact backend; pluggable to any S3-compatible endpoint (AWS S3, R2, B2, SeaweedFS) for production (ADR 031)

Built-in Capability Packs

57 packs ship in the box (47 without an AI gateway configured). Each one hides a multi-step workflow behind a single typed JSON-Schema call so weak open-weight models can drive it as reliably as frontier models. The full input/output contract for every pack lives in docs/PACKS.md. The highlights:

Pack	What it hides
Browser & web
`browser.screenshot_url`	Session lifecycle, navigation, render wait, cleanup
`browser.interact`	Deterministic multi-step CDP (navigate, click, type, scroll, screenshot, assert_text) — no LLM needed
`web.scrape` / `web.scrape_spa`	Firecrawl-backed markdown scrape OR schema-driven SPA extraction
`web.test`	Natural-language browser tests via Playwright MCP + LLM loop
`research.deep`	Multi-source Firecrawl search + per-source scrape + LLM synthesis with inline citations
`content.ground`	Parses a markdown file for claims, finds authoritative sources, inserts real `[link](url)` citations in place
Document & vision
`slides.render`	Marp + Chromium + format flags
`slides.narrate`	Narrated MP4 video (ElevenLabs TTS per slide) + YouTube engagement metadata + sidecar SRT captions + structured `validation` field (default-on post-step)

| av.validate | Structured AV-artifact validation (faststart, codec pin, packet contiguity, RMS swee

Only the beginning is shown; read the rest in the repo

Helmdeck

Overview

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

What you can do with it

Install

Before you install

Values you fill in

What it can do

Basic checksi

Maker matches the repo

Still maintained

Has a licence

Endpoint responds

Sign-in with OAuth

No hidden instructions in tool descriptions

Compared with others in Web & browsersi

Common questions

Alternatives

Browser Use

Chrome DevTools MCP

MCP Server Browser

README from the maker

helmdeck

Why this exists

Status

Quick start

Connect a client

Advanced: manual setup

2. Build the control-plane binary with the UI embedded

3. Run the control plane with admin credentials

…edit deploy/compose/.env.local and fill in real secrets…

Logging in to the Management UI

Architecture at a glance

Built-in Capability Packs