atx-mcp

atx-mcp

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A deterministic (non-generative) asset transformation MCP server for general-purpose AI agents, written in Rust.

It executes editing intent — "level the horizon, crop to 16:9, brighten it up a touch" — as a declarative transform recipe, and tracks every result as an immutable revision. The original asset is never modified.

Tilt correction + auto levels + a look applied (a fully deterministic recipe) — left: input / right: output.

See docs/DESIGN.md for the full design.

Use cases

1. Eye-catch image for an article

"Straighten this photo and crop it to a 16:9, 1600px eye-catch. WebP."

import_asset → detect_tilt (the AI skips correction when it's already near-level) → apply_transform (rotate → crop → resize → encode) → export_asset. The original is never touched, and the same recipe reproduces the same result every time.

1. Multiple sizes for social/CMS

"Generate the OGP, Instagram square, and thumbnail versions of this photo."

One original fans out into OGP 1200×630, Instagram 1080 square, and a 400px thumbnail in parallel. The same-recipe-same-revision idempotency means re-running never double-creates output; a one-word preset name works too.

1. Safe to publish

"Strip the location data for sure, but don't touch the colors."

strip_metadata (exif) removes EXIF including GPS while keeping the ICC profile intact. The AI can also warn ahead of time by checking has_gps from inspect_image.

1. Color and look adjustments

"Make just the sky bluer, leave everything else alone."

Covers curves / levels / hsl / white_balance, the film_soft preset, and importing your own .cube LUT with import_asset then applying it with lut.

1. Local (masked) adjustments

"Darken just the sky a bit, keep the ground as is."

generate_mask builds a mask (gradient, luminosity range, or hue range); after wiring it into the adjustment, render_preview with overlay:"mask" shows exactly where it will bite before you commit.

1. Layer compositing

"Blur a copy of this photo and blend it in at 50% screen for a soft glow."

The layers stack combines 16 blend modes, opacity, and masks to build reproducible composites like soft focus.

1. Watermarks, retouching, and perspective

"Stamp my logo in the corner, remove the power lines, and fix the converging verticals."

svg_overlay burns in a logo, clone/heal remove blemishes or wires by compositing both texture and tone, and perspective corrects converging verticals.

1. Reading documents (OCR pre-processing)

"Read this receipt photo for me." / "What does this slide say?"

detect_document finds the page or screen and returns a perspective quad ready to paste, the ocr_document preset (grayscale, auto levels, light sharpen) and trim concentrate the pixel budget on the text, and render_preview with long_edge:1568 hands the model an image it can actually read. No OCR engine is bundled: the model does the reading, atx only makes the pixels legible and reproducible. detect_text_blocks answers the question that decides the rest — "will this text survive the downscale, and where do I cut?" — by returning the text blocks in reading order plus ready-to-paste crop bands. threshold (Otsu / Sauvola) and ocr_binarize exist for external OCR engines.

1. Verification and accountability

"Show me this image before and after the edits, side by side."

compare_revisions places before/after side by side, or returns a difference heatmap with stats like mean_abs_diff. Every revision keeps its lineage, so the full edit history behind any image used in an article can be traced and reproduced — byte-identical on any machine.

1. Splitting one scan into separate images

"Two mounted sheets were scanned on one page. Save them as two files, keeping a little of the mount around each."

There is no split operation: the model runs one apply_transform per piece against the same source revision (crop to the left/right half, then trim to snap to the paper's edges with padding to keep some mount), and export_asset writes both at once. render_preview with no recipe and overlay:"grid" is how it reads the coordinates first.

What atx doesn't do — generative editing, RAW development, ML-based auto-cropping, OCR itself — is out of scope; see docs/DESIGN.md for the roadmap.

Install

atx-mcp is a single self-contained binary with no runtime dependencies. Pick one of the following.

1. cargo binstall (prebuilt binary, no compilation)

cargo binstall atx-mcp

claude mcp add --scope user asset-transform -- atx-mcp --workspace /path/to/asset-workspace

cargo-binstall downloads the release archive built by this repository's CI instead of compiling, so this is the fastest route for anyone who already has a Rust toolchain. (--scope user makes the server available in every project; omit it for the current project only.)

2. cargo install (builds from source)

cargo install atx-mcp

Works on any platform a Rust toolchain supports, including ones without a prebuilt binary. Needs a C compiler as well (libwebp is built from its vendored source).

3. Prebuilt binary (no Rust toolchain)

Installer scripts (default install location is ~/.local/bin, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\atx-mcp on Windows; the archive is verified against SHA256SUMS before extraction):

# macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gridhra/atx-mcp/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

# Windows

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gridhra/atx-mcp/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

To download manually, grab atx-mcp- - .tar.gz (.zip on Windows) from Releases. Supported targets:

claude mcp add asset-transform -- ~/.local/bin/atx-mcp --workspace /path/to/asset-workspace

4. Docker

ghcr.io/gridhra/atx-mcp is a FROM scratch image holding the statically linked binary and nothing else (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64).

claude mcp add asset-transform -- \

docker run -i --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" ghcr.io/gridhra/atx-mcp:0.6.7

Two things to keep in mind. `-i` is required: the server speaks the MCP stdio transport and needs stdin to stay open. And paths are container paths: the directory you bind-mount appears as /workspace inside the container, so import_asset and export_asset take paths like /workspace/photos/shot.jpg, not host paths.

5. npx (Node.js 18+, nothing to install)

The prebuilt native binary for your platform is pulled in automatically via optionalDependencies.

claude mcp add --scope user asset-transform -- npx -y atx-mcp --workspace /path/to/asset-workspace

Or add it directly to your MCP client config:

{

"mcpServers": { "asset-transform": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "atx-mcp", "--workspace", "/path/to/asset-workspace"] } } }

---

--workspace (env: ATX_WORKSPACE) is the directory used as the asset store. It is created automatically if it doesn't exist.

--max-concurrent-tools (env: ATX_MAX_CONCURRENT_TOOLS) caps how many pixel-processing tool calls (import / inspect / detect_* / apply / preview / compare / mask) run at the same time; the default is the CPU count. Lower it on memory-constrained hosts. Tool work runs on dedicated threads, so the stdio transport (ping, cancellation, the vocabulary tools) stays responsive while images are being processed.

Tools (13)

| apply_transform | Apply a recipe (or a preset) at full resolution and pr