ParaView MCP

Connect ParaView to LLM assistants through the Model Context Protocol.

paraview-mcp-server has two runtime parts:

• a ParaView plugin (C++/Qt) that exposes a TCP bridge inside the ParaView GUI
• a Python MCP server that connects to the plugin and serves tools to any MCP client

Prerequisites

• ParaView 6.0.1 with the MCP plugin loaded (see Plugin Setup)
• uv

Quick Start

Add to Claude Code in one command:

claude mcp add paraview -- uvx paraview-mcp-server

Then set up the ParaView plugin and you're ready to go.

Set Up the ParaView Plugin

Download a pre-built plugin binary from the latest GitHub Release for your platform (Linux x86_64 or macOS arm64). Extract the archive and follow the included INSTALL.md.

Alternatively, build the plugin from source against your ParaView 6.0.1 SDK. See CONTRIBUTING.md for full build instructions.

Once installed:

1. Open Tools > Manage Plugins in ParaView.
2. Click Load New... and select ParaViewMCP.so from the plugin directory.
3. Enable Auto Load.
4. Open Tools > ParaView MCP.
5. Click Start Server.

The dock widget shows the connection status. Non-loopback binds require an auth token.

Configure Your MCP Client

Claude Code (CLI)

claude mcp add paraview -- uvx paraview-mcp-server

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paraview": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paraview-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project root:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paraview": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paraview-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Configuration

The server connects to the ParaView plugin using these environment variables:

Variable	Default	Required	Description
PARAVIEW_HOST	127.0.0.1	No	Host where the ParaView plugin is listening
PARAVIEW_PORT	9877	No	TCP port for the plugin bridge
PARAVIEW_AUTH_TOKEN	—	Non-loopback only	Authentication token (must match the plugin setting)

Defaults work for a standard local setup. Override these when connecting to ParaView on a remote machine or non-standard port:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paraview": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paraview-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "PARAVIEW_HOST": "192.168.1.10",
        "PARAVIEW_PORT": "9877",
        "PARAVIEW_AUTH_TOKEN": "your-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

Tool	Description
execute_paraview_code(code)	Execute Python code inside the active ParaView session
get_pipeline_info()	Return a JSON snapshot of the current pipeline
get_screenshot(width, height)	Capture the active render view as a PNG image

Inspired by

This project follows the approach of Blender-MCP and Slicer-MCP, both of which give LLMs direct code execution inside their respective application runtimes. The existing Paraview_MCP implementation¹ takes a different approach, exposing a fixed set of high-level tools without access to the underlying Python runtime, which limits flexibility for custom workflows.

We instead provide an execute_paraview_code tool that runs arbitrary Python inside the ParaView session, giving the AI agent the same level of control a human scripter would have.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for build instructions, development setup, and pull request guidelines.

License

MIT — see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt for dependency licenses.

Footnotes

1. S. Liu, H. Miao, and P.-T. Bremer, "Paraview-MCP: Autonomous Visualization Agents with Direct Tool Use," in Proc. IEEE VIS 2025 Short Papers, IEEE, 2025. ↩