Filesystem MCP

Filesystem MCP

Let your AI assistant work with your files, safely.

Read, search, edit, and patch files in the folders you choose.

Secret files stay hidden, and risky changes wait for your OK.

Real sessions with a real model, except the web client demo. The apply? prompt comes from the example gatekeeper client, not the server.

Undo skips a file you edited since, so your edit stays

Rename across a repo, reviewed as one diff, with dist/ and .env untouched

Bring back a deleted folder that git can't restore

Secret files stay hidden, and overwrites wait for your OK

Move files into an archive, then undo a move that overwrote one

Review different edits to three files as one diff before they are written

A patch that no longer fits changes nothing

Find a crash in a 14 MB log without reading all of it

What is this?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is how AI apps such as Claude, GitHub Copilot in VS Code, and Cursor connect to tools. Filesystem MCP is an MCP server: a small program that runs on your computer and gives the AI 14 tools for working with files. You choose which folders it can use, and everything outside them is off limits.

Once it is connected, you can ask things like:

• _"Find every TODO in this repo and group them by file."_
• _"Rename getUser to fetchUser in all .ts files. Show me the diff first."_
• _"What changed between config.dev.json and config.prod.json?"_
• _"Read the last 50 lines of server.log and explain the error."_
• _"Move the old screenshots into archive/2025/."_

Why Filesystem MCP?

• It is safe by default. The AI can use only the folders you allow, and .env files, private keys, and cloud credentials are blocked. The server asks you before the AI deletes a non-empty folder, opens a folder you did not allow, or writes over a file with create or move. These questions need a client that can show them. If yours cannot, the server refuses each of those actions instead of asking. Only create and copies can skip the question, because overwrite: true replaces a file without asking, on any client. undo can usually restore a file that create or a copy replaced. Edits made with edit, patch, and replace_text apply without asking, but the AI can show you the diff first with dryRun. If the AI should never change anything, --read-only removes every tool that writes.
• Search and editing are made for code. The AI can search inside files like grep, with a regex engine (RE2) that cannot hang, and by default the server skips .gitignored files and folders like node_modules. Edits are exact-match replacements that return an error when the text does not match, and you can preview them as a diff first.
• It saves the AI's context. The AI can read many files in one call or only the lines it needs, and it can check a file's size and token estimate before reading it.
• It works with any MCP client, over stdio or HTTP, on macOS, Linux, and Windows. You can install it with npx, Docker, or a one-click Claude Desktop extension, or build your own client on it.
• It is private. It runs on your machine, has no telemetry, and makes no network calls.

Compared with the reference server

How this server differs from the official @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem, checked against its README on 2026-11-05:

Quick start

[!NOTE]

You need Node.js 24 or later. Check with node --version.

1. Add the server to your AI app. Pick yours below.
2. Replace /path/to/project with the folder the AI may use. You can list several folders.
3. Restart the app and ask: _"Which folders can you access?"_

[!TIP]

VS Code currently shares the folders you have open with the server, so the

one-click VS Code install works without a path. In other apps, or over HTTP,

put the folder in args. If the AI says it has no folders, that is the fix.

VS Code

Click Install in VS Code above, or add this to .vscode/mcp.json:

{

"servers": { "filesystem": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@j0hanz/filesystem-mcp@latest", "/path/to/project"] } } }

Or from a terminal:

code --add-mcp '{"name":"filesystem","command":"npx","args":["-y","@j0hanz/filesystem-mcp@latest","/path/to/project"]}'

Cursor

Click Install in Cursor above, then add your folder to args. Or add this to .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all projects:

{

"mcpServers": { "filesystem": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@j0hanz/fil