Access and Manage Local Files Securely

The Filesystem MCP server provides Claude with secure access to your local filesystem with configurable access controls. It offers a set of file management tools for reading, writing, moving, searching, and organizing files and directories within specified boundaries.

Use this connector when you need filesystem operations within a controlled directory structure. The source material demonstrates usage for reading and updating configuration files.

Do NOT use this connector if you need access to parent directories (.. paths are blocked for security). Access is restricted to directories you specify during configuration.

You provide a directory path during configuration to define the allowed access boundary. At runtime, you provide file paths (within the allowed directory), content strings for write operations, and search patterns for file discovery.

The server provides six filesystem tools that perform read, write, list, create, move, and search operations on files and directories.

This MCP server integrates with Claude Desktop through configuration added to Claude Code settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/path/to/allowed/directory"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Installation is via npm:

npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem

The server exposes six filesystem tools:

• read_file(path: string): string - Read file contents
• write_file(path: string, content: string): void - Write content to a file
• list_directory(path: string): FileInfo[] - List directory contents
• create_directory(path: string): void - Create new directories
• move_file(source: string, destination: string): void - Move or rename files
• search_files(path: string, pattern: string): string[] - Search for files matching a pattern

Access is restricted to specified directories. The server blocks access to parent directories using .. notation and includes path validation and sanitization. Configurable read/write permissions control filesystem access.

The source material provides this example:

Claude, please read the contents of ./config/settings.json
and update the database connection string.