QGIS MCP

Connect QGIS to Claude AI through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling Claude to directly control QGIS — manage layers, edit features, run processing algorithms, render maps, and more.

102 MCP tools covering layer management, feature editing, processing, rendering, styling, layout & atlas authoring, cross-layer SQL, plugin development, and system management. Compatible with QGIS 3.28–4.x. Works with Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, opencode, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, and more.

Architecture

Claude ←→ MCP Server (FastMCP) ←→ TCP socket ←→ QGIS Plugin (QTimer) ←→ PyQGIS API

1. QGIS Plugin (qgis_mcp_plugin/) — Runs inside QGIS. Non-blocking TCP socket server that processes JSON commands within QGIS’s event loop.
2. MCP Server (src/qgis_mcp/server.py) — Runs outside QGIS. Exposes QGIS operations as MCP tools via FastMCP.

Installation

No clone needed. Requires QGIS 3.28+ and uv.

1. Install the QGIS plugin

In QGIS: Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins > search QGIS MCP > Install.

Restart QGIS and click Start Server in the QGIS MCP dock widget.

2. Connect your coding agent

Usage

1. Start the plugin — In QGIS, click the MCP toolbar button (or Plugins > QGIS MCP) and click “Start Server”
2. Talk to Claude — The MCP tools will appear automatically. Ask Claude to work with your QGIS project.

Example prompt

You have access to QGIS tools. Do the following:
1. Ping to check the connection
2. Create a new project and save it at "/tmp/my_project.qgz"
3. Load the vector layer "world_map.gpkg" available in Qgis ("resources/data/world_map.gpkg")
4. Filter "USA" from the field "adm0_a3"
6. Render the map and show me the result
7. Save the project

Updating

The plugin (inside QGIS) and the MCP server (outside QGIS) must stay in sync — a newer server sending a command the older plugin doesn’t know will return an error. Run diagnose after any update to verify both sides match.

To auto-update instead, add --refresh-package qgis-mcp before --from in the configs above: uvx then re-resolves this package from GitHub on every launch. Warning: this requires network at launch — the MCP server fails to start when offline — and adds ~1–3s to startup. The plain configs above use the cached version and work offline.

After updating the plugin, click Stop / Start in the QGIS MCP dock widget (or reload via Plugins > QGIS MCP > Reload Plugin) to load the new code without restarting QGIS.

Tools (102)

All tools are async with human-readable titles and annotations (readOnly, destructive, idempotent). Destructive tools ask for confirmation via MCP elicitation when supported; clients without elicitation proceed normally (fail-open) since tools are already gated by ToolAnnotations. Long-running tools report progress via MCP logging.

Compound tool mode

Set QGIS_MCP_TOOL_MODE=compound to reduce the granular tools to ~23 grouped tools, cutting schema overhead per LLM turn. Each compound tool takes an action parameter:

QGIS_MCP_TOOL_MODE=compound uv run --no-sync src/qgis_mcp/server.py

Groups: system, project, layer, features, selection, style, canvas, render, processing, code, batch, layer_tree, plugins, variables, settings, expression, transform, message_log, layer_property.

Configuration

Authentication

By default the socket has no authentication — it binds to localhost only, but any process on the machine that can reach the port can drive QGIS (including execute_code, which runs arbitrary PyQGIS). For shared or multi-user machines, set a shared secret so only callers that know it can connect:

1. Set QGIS_MCP_TOKEN in the environment QGIS runs in (so the plugin enforces it), then Stop/Start the server in the dock. The QGIS log shows Token authentication ENABLED.

2. Set the same value in the MCP server’s environment — add it to the env block of your MCP client config:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "qgis": {
         "command": "uvx",
         "args": ["--from", "https://github.com/nkarasiak/qgis-mcp/archive/refs/heads/main.zip", "qgis-mcp-server"],
         "env": { "QGIS_MCP_TOKEN": "your-long-random-secret" }
       }
     }
   }
   

The token is compared in constant time. When QGIS_MCP_TOKEN is unset (the default), behaviour is unchanged. This raises the bar against other local users/processes; a process running as the same user can still read the token from your config, so it is not a sandbox.

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/nkarasiak/qgis-mcp.git
cd qgis-mcp
python install.py   # symlinks plugin + configures your MCP client

install.py options: --clients claude-desktop,cursor, --remote (uvx instead of uv run), --profile myprofile, --uninstall.

Windows (Microsoft Store / MSIX Claude Desktop): install.py uses --directory instead of cwd in generated configs. This is required for Store-installed Claude Desktop, which runs MCP servers in an MSIX sandbox that silently drops cwd. If you configure manually, use uv --directory "/path/to/qgis-mcp" run --no-sync src/qgis_mcp/server.py — this works on both MSIX and standalone installs. You can identify a Store install when the config file is under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude\ instead of %APPDATA%\Claude\.

# Unit tests (no QGIS needed — mocked socket)
uv run --no-sync pytest tests/test_mcp_tools.py -v

# Integration tests (requires QGIS plugin running)
uv run --no-sync pytest tests/test_qgis_live.py -v

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.