ftx-mcp

Talk to your FactoryTalk Optix project. ftx-mcp connects AI tools (Desktop, Cowork, Code — or any MCP client) to FactoryTalk Optix Studio on your Windows machine, so you can build and change HMI screens by describing what you want:

“Add a header that says ‘Hello Optix’ to Screen 1 and show me.”

“Bind that label’s visibility to Model/PumpRunning.”

“Looks right. Launch the emulator and validate it.”

Your LLM authors the change directly into your open Studio project, runs the emulator, and looks at the rendered runtime to confirm it worked. It is a development and testing companion: shipping to hardware stays in Studio’s own Deploy dialog, in your hands. Everything besides the LLM calls runs locally on your machine. No cloud service, no API key; your LLM of choice provides the intelligence.

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Install (10 minutes)

Requirements: Windows 11, FactoryTalk Optix Studio 1.7.x, and an MCP client like Claude Cowork. Also: the .NET SDK (8 or later), needed for build_check (without it build_check returns no_dotnet); Google Chrome (the CDP verify loop; skip with setup.ps1 -NoCdp) and — for the Claude Desktop Microsoft Store build connector path — Node.js (winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS; the config uses npx mcp-remote). Setup auto-installs Tesseract OCR via winget for the zero-vision-token text tools (skip with -NoOcr; everything else works without it) and Pillow (a hard dependency) into the venv for pixel diffing.

Run setup.ps1 from a regular PowerShell window — not a shell hosted inside a packaged app like the Store build of Claude Desktop, whose %LOCALAPPDATA% writes are virtualized (setup now detects this and refuses). If you downloaded a ZIP instead of cloning, run Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Unblock-File first.

If setup.ps1 (or any bootstrap\*.ps1) fails to run at all with a script- execution / “running scripts is disabled” error, your machine’s execution policy is blocking unsigned scripts. Unblock them for the current window only — no admin, no persistent policy change — then re-run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy Bypass

git clone https://github.com/asqi-carter/ftx-mcp.git
cd ftx-mcp
.\bootstrap\setup.ps1                                  # install (does not start anything)
.\bootstrap\services.ps1 start                         # start the service + cdp chrome
.\bootstrap\services.ps1 status                        # verify health
http://127.0.0.1:8765/ui                               # health dashboard

Auth: the default install is loopback-only with auth OFF — setup never prompts, and no token is needed on your own box. Binding to the LAN is the one case that requires auth: install with .\bootstrap\setup.ps1 -EnableAuth (see docs/security.md). If a UI/API unexpectedly asks