Filesystem MCP Server

license

Apache-2.0(OSI, new code under the monorepo's transition LICENSE)+MIT(OSI, legacy contributions not yet relicensed

docs

CC-BY-4.0(documentation other than the specifications

source

public

core-gated

ungated

A fully OSI-licensed reference server with no feature-gated core, though the two available license statements disagree. The server's own README says "This MCP server is licensed under the MIT License ... please see the LICENSE file in the project repository", and that LICENSE file is not MIT: modelcontextprotocol/servers carries the MCP project's transition text, byte-identical to the specification repo's - Apache-2.0 for new code, CC-BY-4.0 for documentation other than specifications, and MIT retained only for pre-transition contributions not yet relicensed. So the README points at a file that contradicts it. Both code licenses are recorded here, and the documentation license apart from them, since a license covering prose should not govern the artifact you run. Every part is OSI-approved, so the tier and the 5 hold whichever statement you take.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/main/LICENSE recorded 2026-08-13

  The monorepo LICENSE, digest byte-identical to the MCP spec repo's: "The MCP project is undergoing a licensing transition from the MIT License to the Apache License, Version 2.0. All new code and specification contributions to the project are licensed under Apache-2.0. Documentation contributions (excluding specifications) are licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Contributions made by authors who originally licensed their work under the MIT License and who have not yet granted explicit permission to relicense remain licensed under the MIT License." Followed by the full Apache-2.0 text.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/main/src/filesystem/README.md recorded 2026-08-13

  License section - "This MCP server is licensed under the MIT License. This means you are free to use, modify, and distribute the software, subject to the terms and conditions of the MIT License. For more details, please see the LICENSE file in the project repository." The whole server ships here and installs as @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem; nothing is withheld and there is no paid tier.

• https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/filesystem recorded 2026-08-13

  The server's directory in the monorepo, rendering the README above.

1,945,615 downloads of @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem in the trailing 30 days, which bands at 1M-10M, level 4 on the software adoption scale. The count is for the per-server npm package rather than for the monorepo it lives in, so it is not shared with the other servers in that repository.

• https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-month/@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem recorded 2026-08-12

  1,945,615 downloads in the trailing 30 days for @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem

Full local-filesystem surface with sandboxed access controls. Access is confined to allowed directories set either by command-line argument or, preferred, dynamically by the client through the MCP Roots protocol, and the server refuses to initialize if neither is provided.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/main/src/filesystem/README.md recorded 2026-08-13

  Features - read/write files, create/list/delete directories, move, search, file metadata, "Dynamic directory access control via Roots". Per-tool table with readOnlyHint and destructiveHint columns; read_media_file streams a file back as a base64 content block with its MIME type. Without command-line arguments and without client Roots support "the server will throw an error during initialization".

• https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/filesystem recorded 2026-08-13

  The server's directory in the monorepo, rendering the tool list above.