Installation

Choose Your Path

mcilspy has three installation tiers, depending on how much capability you need.

Option 1: Metadata Tools Only

Install just the MCP server. Seven tools work immediately by parsing PE metadata directly — no .NET SDK required.

pip install mcilspy

uv pip install mcilspy

pipx install mcilspy

Available tools: search_methods, search_fields, search_properties, list_events, list_resources, get_metadata_summary, search_strings

Option 2: Full Power with Auto-Install

Install the MCP server, then let it install ilspycmd for you. The install_ilspy tool detects your platform and package manager automatically.

pip install mcilspy

Then ask your AI assistant:

“Install ilspycmd for me”

Or call install_ilspy with install_dotnet_sdk: true to install the .NET SDK first.

Auto-detected package managers:

Arch Linux / Manjaro (pacman)
Ubuntu / Debian / Mint (apt)
Fedora / RHEL / CentOS (dnf)
openSUSE (zypper)
macOS (homebrew)
Windows (winget / chocolatey)

Option 3: Manual Setup

Install the .NET SDK and ilspycmd yourself:

Install the .NET SDK from dotnet.microsoft.com/download
Install ilspycmd as a global .NET tool:
Terminal window
```
dotnet tool install --global ilspycmd
```
Ensure the tools directory is in your PATH:
Terminal window
```
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.dotnet/tools"
```
Install the MCP server:
Terminal window
```
pip install mcilspy
```

Configure Your MCP Client

claude mcp add ilspy -- mcilspy

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ilspy": {
      "command": "mcilspy"
    }
  }
}

Point your MCP client at the mcilspy command. The server communicates over stdin/stdout using JSON-RPC.

{
  "command": "mcilspy",
  "args": []
}

Verify Installation

Ask your AI assistant to run the installation check:

“Check if ilspycmd is installed correctly”

This calls check_ilspy_installation, which reports:

Whether the dotnet CLI is available and its version
Whether ilspycmd is installed, its version, and its path
Troubleshooting instructions if anything is missing