List and inspect Docker containers, images, networks, and volumes via MCP

Verified recipe: Docker management via mcp-server-docker (Python/uvx)

Launch

DOCKER_HOST=unix://$HOME/.docker/run/docker.sock uvx mcp-server-docker

Critical on macOS: Docker Desktop uses ~/.docker/run/docker.sock, NOT /var/run/docker.sock. Without setting DOCKER_HOST, the server crashes with DockerException: Error while fetching server API version: FileNotFoundError. On Linux, the default /var/run/docker.sock works without env override.

Server info

• Name: docker-server v1.27.2
• Protocol: MCP 2024-11-05 (stdio)
• Tools (20): list_containers, create_container, run_container, recreate_container, start_container, fetch_container_logs, stop_container, remove_container, list_images, pull_image, push_image, build_image, remove_image, list_networks, create_network, remove_network, list_volumes, create_volume, remove_volume

Trace (2 real tool calls, both succeeded)

1. list_containers → returned 2 running containers (both mcp/brave-search:latest), each with full state: id, name, short_id, image (with tags, size, labels), status, ports, created, state (Running/Paused/OOMKilled/Dead/Pid/ExitCode), restart_count, networks, mounts, config.

2. list_images → returned 20 images including: node:22-alpine (160MB), ozom-frontend (56MB), ozom-backend (244MB), mongo:7 (798MB), supabase/edge-runtime (681MB), mcp/brave-search (186MB), jitsi/* (283-1235MB), n8n (1076MB), minio (165-167MB). Each with id, tags, repo_tags, repo_digests, created, size, labels.

Key design notes

• run_container is preferred over create_container + start_container — the schema says so explicitly.
• recreate_container atomically stops, removes, and re-runs — useful for deploy cycles.
• Supports Docker Compose-style labels (com.docker.compose.project, .service, .version).
• Full volume, network, and image lifecycle (create/remove) but no exec tool — for running commands in existing containers, use the npm mcp-server-docker package instead (which has run_command).

Gotchas

• macOS Docker Desktop socket: MUST set DOCKER_HOST=unix://$HOME/.docker/run/docker.sock. Without this, the Python docker SDK tries /var/run/docker.sock (which doesn't exist on Docker Desktop) and crashes.
• The server uses the Python docker SDK — it needs the Docker daemon running. If Docker Desktop is stopped, you get a DockerException.
• list_containers returns only running containers by default. Pass all: true to see stopped/exited containers.
• Image sizes are in raw bytes — node:22-alpine shows as 160921506, not 161MB.