MCP server and editors

Driving elemctl from an AI agent over MCP, plus plugins and the VS Code extension.

MCP server

The server exposes platform operations as MCP tools (stdio transport):

pip install "elemctl[mcp]"
claude mcp add elemctl -- elemctl mcp

The server reads connection credentials from the same ELEMENT_* variables / .env. Among the tools: list_apps, get_app, deploy (with an ok field in the response), verify_deploy, list_builds, merge_branch and others.

A single environment is not a limit: every tool that talks to the platform takes an optional env_file - a path to another installation’s .env. One server thus serves both the cloud and a local installation without a restart with different credentials. list_apps returns brief cards by default (id, name, status, uri, applied version): full cards of a whole space are tens of thousands of characters in an agent’s response - pass brief=false for them.

Plugins

elemctl discovers external packages through importlib.metadata entry points: it declares nothing about plugins in its own pyproject.toml and reads them on demand. This keeps non-publishable vendor artifacts in a separate package while the elemctl core stays clean and public.

One group is currently supported – elemctl.debug_adapter: a plugin package declares the directory of the platform debug adapter (proprietary 1C jars, not shipped with elemctl). The entry-point value is a path or a zero-argument callable returning a path; the path points to a directory that contains a repo/ subdirectory with the adapter jars.

# a plugin package's pyproject.toml
[project.entry-points."elemctl.debug_adapter"]
name = "my_package:adapter_root"     # () -> Path to the directory containing repo/

# the adapter path from the installed plugin (for the VS Code extension):
# {"path": "...", "found": true} or {"path": null, "found": false}
elemctl debug-adapter

# which plugins are visible – install diagnostics
elemctl plugins

The adapter itself (proprietary 1C jars) is extracted from the platform distribution by tools/extract_adapter.py – into a directory for a manual xbslDebug.adapterPath, or for building the plugin package. The script is not shipped in the package distribution.

Plugin discovery is disabled by ELEMCTL_NO_PLUGINS=1 (a run with the core capabilities only).

VS Code

Two companion extensions integrate elemctl into the editor:

XBSL (the xbsl-lint project) – highlighting, linting, a form preview, and the XBSL: deploy the project button that runs elemctl deploy as a terminal task with the apply verification.
XBSL Debug (lives in this repository, editors/vscode) – debugging 1C:Element applications with the platform’s DAP adapter; the debug session data comes from elemctl apps debug.

Both are also published to Open VSX.