Interactive Shell

The shell keeps a persistent connection open and gives you tab completion, history, and the ability to switch output formats on the fly.

Start a shell

mcp time shell

time> tools
  convert-time      Convert time between timezones.
  get-current-time  Get current time in a specific timezone.

time> get-current-time 'America/New_York'
2025-03-15T14:30:00-04:00

time> set output json
output = json

time> get-current-time 'Europe/London'
{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "2025-03-15T18:30:00+00:00"
    }
  ]
}

time> exit

Shell commands

Command	Description
`tools`	List all tools
`resources`	List all resources
`prompts`	List all prompts
`<tool> [args...]`	Call a tool
`tool <name> [args...]`	Call a tool (explicit)
`resource <name>`	Read a resource
`prompt <name> [args...]`	Render a prompt
`set output <mode>`	Switch output format (auto, json, yaml, raw, table)
`help`	Show available commands
`exit` / `quit`	Exit the shell

Tab completion

Press Tab to complete:

Tool names
--flag names for the current tool
Shell commands (tools, resources, set output, etc.)