PnP.PowerShell.MCPServer 0.1.2-beta

PnP PowerShell MCP Server

💡 Description

This MCP server allows the use of natural language to run PnP PowerShell commands and to author complex PnP PowerShell scripts. It may handle complex prompts that are executed as a chain of PnP PowerShell cmdlets that try to fulfill the user's request, and it can search the community's PnP Script Samples library for ready-to-adapt scripts. This way you can manage many different areas of Microsoft 365 — SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Entra ID, OneDrive, Planner, Power Platform, Microsoft 365 Groups, taxonomy, search, and tenant administration — straight from your MCP client, and use it as a jump-start for writing your own automation scripts.

📦 Prerequisites

• .NET 10 SDK (only required to build/run from source — published tool releases are self-contained)

• PowerShell 7+ (pwsh) installed and available on PATH

• The PnP.PowerShell module installed:

  Install-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell -Scope CurrentUser -Force
  

🚀 Installation & Usage

This MCP server shells out to the locally installed PnP PowerShell module — it does not do any authentication for you. Authenticate first using Connect-PnPOnline (see Best Practices for the recommended auth methods), then the MCP server will reuse the same PnP PowerShell connection context.

• TYPE: Local (stdio)
• INSTALL:

The one-click buttons above register the server under the name pnp-powershell and point it at the pnp-powershell-mcp-server command, so install the tool first (below) — otherwise the client will register a server it cannot start.

Install as a .NET global tool

dotnet tool install --global PnP.PowerShell.MCPServer --prerelease

This installs a self-contained, native AOT executable named pnp-powershell-mcp-server on your PATH. Supported platforms: Windows (x64, arm64), macOS (arm64, x64) and Linux (x64, arm64, musl x64).

To update an existing install:

dotnet tool update --global PnP.PowerShell.MCPServer --prerelease

Hitting Version <x> of package PnP.PowerShell.MCPServer.<rid> is not found in NuGet feeds? This tool ships as a small wrapper package plus one package per platform, and that error means the platform package for your machine was never published for that version. It affects 0.1.1-beta and earlier — install 0.1.2-beta or later, or build and run from source. Maintainers: see RELEASING.md.

Add to VS Code

1. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and type MCP: Add Server.

2. Select Command (stdio) as the server type.

3. Enter the command to run the MCP server:

   pnp-powershell-mcp-server
   

4. Name the server (e.g., PnP PowerShell MCP Server).

As a result, you should have the following configuration in your .vscode/mcp.json file:

{
    "servers": {
        "PnP PowerShell MCP Server": {
            "type": "stdio",
            "command": "pnp-powershell-mcp-server"
        }
    }
}

Now when you open the GitHub Copilot chat in VS Code, you should be able to select the PnP PowerShell MCP Server from the list of available MCP servers and start using it to manage Microsoft 365 using natural language. In the prompt specify that "Using PnP PowerShell, I want you to..." and GitHub Copilot Agent will use the MCP server to execute your request.

Add to GitHub Copilot CLI

If you are using GitHub Copilot CLI, you may add the PnP PowerShell MCP server to Copilot by doing the following:

1. Start the Copilot CLI:

   copilot
   

2. Use the copilot mcp command to add the MCP server:

   /mcp add
   

3. Fill in the MCP form:

   • Server name: whatever you like, without spaces, e.g. pnp-powershell-mcp-server
   • Server type: Local
   • Command: pnp-powershell-mcp-server
   • Arguments: leave empty

After that click Ctrl+S to save and q to exit the MCP form. You can now use the PnP PowerShell MCP server in GitHub Copilot CLI, e.g. "Using PnP PowerShell, I want you to...".

Add to Claude Code

claude mcp add pnp-powershell --scope user -- pnp-powershell-mcp-server

--scope user makes the server available in every project; drop it to register it for the current project only. Check it was picked up with claude mcp list.

Add to Claude Desktop

1. In Claude Desktop, open Settings by clicking on the hamburger icon in the top left corner.

2. Select File > Settings (or press Ctrl + ,).

3. In the Developer tab, click Edit Config. Note: If you don't see the Developer tab, enable it first from Help > Enable Developer Mode.

4. This opens explorer; edit claude_desktop_config.json in your favorite text editor and add:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "PnP-PowerShell": {
         "command": "pnp-powershell-mcp-server"
       }
     }
   }
   

5. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect.

Note: On Windows, Claude doesn't exit when you close the window — it keeps running in the background. Find it in the system tray, right-click and select Quit to exit completely.

Add to Cursor

1. From the chat option pick the Agent settings option.

2. Go to Tools & MCP tab and click on New MCP server.

3. Modify the mcp.json configuration as follows:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "PnP PowerShell MCP Server": {
         "type": "stdio",
         "command": "pnp-powershell-mcp-server"
       }
     }
   }
   

4. Save and enable the PnP PowerShell MCP Server in the Tools & MCP tab and wait for the tools to load.

📷 Use Cases

The below use cases are only a few examples of how you may use this MCP server. It is capable of handling many different tasks, so feel free to experiment and manage Microsoft 365 using natural language.

Manage SharePoint Online

prompt: "Add a new list to this site with title 'awesome ducks'. Then add new columns to that list including them in the default view. The first should be a text description column and the second one should be a user column. Then add 3 items to this list with some funny jokes about ducks added in the description column and my user in the user column."

Manage Microsoft Teams

prompt: "Create a new Team on Teams with name 'Awesome Ducks' and in the General channel add a welcome post."

Bootstrap a script from a community sample

prompt: "I need a PnP PowerShell script that exports all SharePoint list items to a CSV file — find a community sample and adapt it for the 'Documents' list on my site."

Report on tenant state

prompt: "Can you check if I have a Power Automate flow called 'HoursReportingReminder' and if so disable it?"

🛠️ Tools

Sessions

Commands run in a persistent pwsh session, so a connection made with Connect-PnPOnline stays alive across tool calls — you connect once rather than on every command. Pass an optional sessionId to pnp_run_command / pnp_get_connection_status when you need two tenant connections side by side; otherwise leave it unset. Idle sessions end after 30 minutes.

Configuration

Clients that support the MCP Tasks extension can run pnp_run_command as a task and poll for the result, rather than holding the request open for the duration of a long tenant operation.

🏗️ How to build and run it locally

Before anything, restore and build the project:

dotnet build

Running MCP in VS Code from local build

Start the MCP server from source so it may be used by GitHub Copilot Agent. In VS Code GitHub Copilot Agent mode, click the tools icon, select Add more tools → Add MCP server → Command (stdio), and enter:

dotnet run --project FULL_PATH_TO_YOUR_PROJECT/PnPPowerShell.MCPServer.csproj

Name it however you like. It's recommended to add it to workspace scope for testing. This repo's .mcp.json already contains an equivalent configuration you can adapt.

If you need to point the script-sample tools at a local clone of pnp/script-samples instead of the auto-discovered VS Code extension index, set the PNP_SCRIPT_SAMPLES_PATH environment variable to the clone's root folder.

Running MCP from local build using the inspector (Debugging)

One of the ways to test the MCP server is by using the MCP Inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector dotnet run --project ./PnPPowerShell.MCPServer.csproj

Wait for the inspector to start and open it in your browser. You should see the MCP server running, and you can query and execute its tools locally.

Publishing a native AOT build

dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

Replace win-x64 with your target RuntimeIdentifier (linux-x64, osx-arm64, etc.). The output is a single native executable with no .NET runtime dependency.

Native AOT needs a platform toolchain: the "Desktop development with C++" workload on Windows, Xcode command line tools on macOS, or clang and zlib1g-dev on Linux.

Releasing to NuGet

A release is eight packages — a small wrapper plus one per platform — and a plain dotnet pack builds only the wrapper. Do not publish by hand; see RELEASING.md and use the Release workflow.

🔗 Resources

• PnP PowerShell documentation
• PnP Script Samples
• MCP C# SDK
• MCP servers
• MCP inspector