mcp-containerd is an MCP server implemented in Rust using the RMCP library for managing Containerd, supporting the full CRI (Container Runtime Interface) surface across both runtime and image services. It gives an AI assistant direct control over pod sandboxes, containers, and images on a Containerd instance, rather than requiring you to run ctr or crictl commands by hand.

Use it when you want an AI assistant to inspect or manage a Containerd runtime: listing containers and images, creating and managing Pod sandboxes, starting or stopping containers, pulling or deleting images, or checking CRI version and image filesystem information. It requires a running Containerd instance, connecting by default to unix:///run/containerd/containerd.sock, plus a Rust build environment and Protobuf compilation tools to build it from source. Since it can create, start, stop, and delete real containers and pods, it should be treated with the same care as direct ctr/crictl access.

list_containers and list_images enumerate what's running or stored in Containerd, and version reports CRI version information. Pod sandbox lifecycle is covered by create_pod_sandbox, stop_pod_sandbox, and delete_pod_sandbox. Container lifecycle is covered by create_container, start_container, stop_container, and delete_container. Image operations include get_image_status, pull_images, delete_images, and get_image_filesystem_info. Together these cover the Runtime Service and Image Service interfaces of the CRI spec, plus command execution inside containers and pod/container status queries.

Build from source with Cargo:

cargo build --release

By default the server connects to unix:///run/containerd/containerd.sock. Run mcp-containerd -t http to serve over HTTP streaming instead of the default transport, or mcp-containerd --help for the full command-line options.

Platform and infrastructure engineers running Containerd who want an AI assistant to inspect and manage pods, containers, and images directly through the CRI interface, instead of running ctr or crictl commands by hand. Example requests it's built to answer include simply asking for a list of containers or a list of images, with the assistant mapping that directly to list_containers or list_images.