Arguments

mcptocli reads the tool’s JSON schema and generates CLI flags automatically.

Named flags

mcp time get-current-time --timezone 'America/New_York'

Positional arguments

Required scalar arguments can be passed positionally, in schema order:

mcp time get-current-time 'America/New_York'

Booleans

mcp api update --dry-run
mcp api update --no-dry-run

Arrays

Repeat the flag for multiple values:

mcp api search --tag cli --tag go --tag mcp

Structured JSON

From a file:

mcp api create --payload @data.json

From stdin:

cat data.json | mcp api create --payload @-

Raw JSON input

For complex schemas, bypass flag parsing entirely:

mcp api complex-tool --input '{"nested": {"key": "value"}}'

Tip: The --input flag accepts a raw JSON object and sends it directly as the tool’s arguments — useful when a schema is deeply nested or hard to express as flags.