JVM Diagnostics MCP

This is an MCP Server that wraps various JVM diagnostic tools (CLI) such as jstat, jcmd, jps, adds a nice prompt to improve how they work, and exposes them.

What can it do?

It has access to various JVM diagnostic tools, so it can perform tasks such as:

Monitoring JVM performance metrics using jstat.
Inspecting and managing JVM processes with jps.
Executing diagnostic commands with jcmd.
Analyzing thread dumps, heap dumps, and other JVM-related diagnostics.

Is it safe to use?

As the MCP server is driven by an LLM, we recommend being cautious and validating the commands it generates. If you're using a reliable LLM like Claude 3.7 or GPT-4o, which has excellent training data on JVM tools, our experience has been very good.

Please read our License which states that "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND", so you use this MCP server at your own risk.

Is it secured, and should I run this on a remote server?

Short answer: NO.

This MCP server runs JVM diagnostic commands for you and could be exploited by an attacker to run other commands. The current implementation, as with most MCP servers at the moment, only works with the stdio transport: it's supposed to run locally on your machine, using your JVM tools, as you would do by yourself.

In the future, it's possible to have this MCP server support the http transport and token-based authentication, so that it could be used remotely by different persons. This will be considered once the MCP specification and SDK are more stable.

How do I install it?

This MCP server currently only works with the stdio transport, so it should run locally on your machine, using your JVM diagnostic tools.

This server can run as a Java application or inside a Docker container. If Java is installed on your machine, this first option is probably the easiest one. If you don't have Java installed, or if you want to have something a bit more secure, you can use the second option.

Install and configure the server with Java

Make sure you have Java 17 or higher installed. You can check this by running java -version in your terminal.
Ensure that JVM diagnostic tools like jstat, jcmd, and jps are available in your environment.

Binaries are available on the GitHub Release page, here's how you can download the latest one with the GitHub CLI:

Download the latest release: gh release download --repo brunoborges/jvm-diagnostics-mcp --pattern='jvm-diagnostics-mcp.jar'

To use the server from Claude Desktop, add the server to your claude_desktop_config.json file. Please note that you need to point to the location where you downloaded the jvm-diagnostics-mcp.jar file.

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "jvm-diagnostics": {
            "command": "java",
            "args": [
                "-jar",
              "~/Downloads/jvm-diagnostics-mcp.jar"
            ]
        }
    }
}

To use the server from VS Code Insiders, here are the steps to configure it:

Install GitHub Copilot
Install this MCP Server using the command palette: MCP: Add Server...
Configure GitHub Copilot to run in Agent mode, by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the chat window
On top of the chat window, you should see the jvm-diagnostics-mcp server configured as a tool

Install and configure the server with Docker

To use the server from Claude Desktop, add the server to your claude_desktop_config.json file. The JAVA_HOME environment variable should be set to the location of your Java installation.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jvm-diagnostics": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "JAVA_HOME",
        "ghcr.io/brunoborges/jvm-diagnostics-mcp:latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "JAVA_HOME": "/path/to/java/home"
      }
    }
  }
}

To use the server from VS Code Insiders, here are the steps to configure it:

Install GitHub Copilot
Install this MCP Server using the command palette: MCP: Add Server...
Configure GitHub Copilot to run in Agent mode, by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the chat window
On top of the chat window, you should see the jvm-diagnostics-mcp server configured as a tool