What is Tiny Mcp

tiny_mcp is a lightweight Ruby implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) designed to facilitate the creation and local serving of tools for AI assistants.

Use cases

Use cases for tiny_mcp include building weather and time tools for AI assistants, creating custom automation scripts, and serving local APIs for quick testing and development.

How to use

To use tiny_mcp, install it via gem install tiny_mcp, create tools by inheriting from TinyMCP::Tool, and serve them using TinyMCP.serve. You can also create an executable script for easy access.

Key features

Key features of tiny_mcp include easy tool creation, local serving capabilities, support for JSON-RPC requests, and a simple interface for defining tool arguments and options.

Where to use

tiny_mcp can be used in various fields such as AI development, automation, and any application requiring local tool creation and serving for interactive tasks.

TinyMCP

A tiny Ruby implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that makes it easy to create and serve tools locally for AI assistants.

Installation

gem install tiny_mcp

Usage

Create tools by inheriting from TinyMCP::Tool:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'tiny_mcp'

class WeatherTool < TinyMCP::Tool
  name 'get_weather'
  desc 'Get current weather for a city'
  arg :city, :string, 'City name' # required
  opt :units, :string, 'Temperature units (c/f)' # optional

  def call(city:, units: 'c')
    # Your implementation here
    "Weather in #{city}: 20°C, sunny"
  end
end

class TimeTool < TinyMCP::Tool
  name 'get_time'
  desc 'Get current time'
  opt :timezone, :string, 'Timezone name'

  def call(timezone: 'UTC')
    Time.now.getlocal(timezone)
  end
end

# Serve multiple tools
TinyMCP.serve(WeatherTool, TimeTool, server_name: 'my_tool')

You can put this in a bin/mcp file for example, and make it executable:

chmod +x bin/mcp

Then add it to Claude Code:

claude mcp add my-mcp bin/mcp

The server reads JSON-RPC requests from stdin and writes responses to stdout.

See examples/ for more.

Multiple results and different formats

By default TinyMCP assumes you’re returning text from your call function. If you want to return image, audio, or a bunch of different results, wrap your return value in an array, and TinyMCP will treat your return value as the whole content body.

Don’t forget that binary data such as images and audio needs to be Base64-encoded.

require 'base64'

class MultiModalTool < TinyMCP::Tool
  name 'get_different_formats'
  desc 'Get results in different formats'

  def call
    [
      {
        type: 'text',
        text: 'This is a text response'
      },
      {
        type: 'image',
        mimeType: 'image/png',
        data: Base64.strict_encode64(File.binread('image.png'))
      },
      {
        type: 'audio',
        mimeType: 'audio/mpeg',
        data: Base64.strict_encode64(File.binread('audio.mp3'))
      }
    ]
  end
end

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/maxim/tiny_mcp. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the TinyMCP project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.