Alfresco MCP Lab

A reproducible lab to experiment with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) against Alfresco Community Edition using Docker.

Architecture

flowchart LR
  O("`OLLAMA
  local gpt-oss`")
  CIC("`CIC LiteLLM
  service claude`")
  CMD("`MCP CLIENT 
  CMD`")
  UI("`MCP CLIENT 
  UI`")
  S("`MCP SERVER
  community project`")
  A("`ALFRESCO
  Community`")

  CMD -- "8003" --> S
  S   -- "8080" --> A
  UI  -- "8003" --> S

  O -. "11434" .-> CMD
  CIC -. "443" .-> UI                                                                                                                 

Components

• ALFRESCO – ACS Community Edition at http://localhost:8080/alfresco
• MCP SERVER – Python Alfresco MCP Server by Steve Reiner, exposed at http://localhost:8003/mcp
• MCP CLIENT – CLI – MCP CLI
  • Ollama – local LLM runtime (this lab uses the gpt-oss model)
• MCP CLIENT – UI – Chainlit app using LiteLLM as the LLM gateway (defaults to Claude Sonnet; configurable)

Prerequisites

• Docker & Docker Compose
• For the MCP Client CMD

  • Ollama running on the host with the gpt-oss model pulled (around 13 GB):

    brew install ollama   # macOS (or see ollama.com for your OS)
    ollama pull gpt-oss
    

• For the MCP Client UI
  • LITELLM_API_KEY in your environment (or in .env) for your chosen provider

Networking note host.docker.internal works out-of-the-box on Docker Desktop (macOS/Windows) On Linux, add extra_hosts: ["host.docker.internal:host-gateway"] to services that must reach the host (e.g., to call Ollama running on the host)

Quick start

Bring up Alfresco and MCP Server:

docker compose up --build

Once started:

• Alfresco Repository: http://localhost:8080/alfresco (default credentials admin / admin)
• MCP Server: http://localhost:8003/mcp

About compose.yaml

This repo compose.yaml includes sub-stacks:

include:
  - mcp-server/compose.yaml
  - alfresco/compose.yaml

If your Compose version doesn’t support include, run with multiple files:

docker compose -f alfresco/compose.yaml -f mcp-server/compose.yaml up --build

MCP client (CLI)

This client uses a local LLM (gpt-oss) via Ollama

1. Verify Ollama and model:

   ollama list
   # Expect something like:
   # gpt-oss:latest   ...   13 GB
   

2. Run the CLI:

   cd mcp-client-cmd
   docker compose run --rm mcp-client
   

3. Try a prompt: