Server command-line reference

ccm starts one MCP server over standard input and standard output.

When the distribution is installed in conda’s environment, the public conda plugin hook also provides conda mcp. That launcher selects the invoking conda installation automatically and starts the same server in a clean process.

Usage

ccm [--conda-exe PATH] [--timeout SECONDS]
              [--output-limit-bytes BYTES] [--stdin-limit-bytes BYTES]
              [--allow-write] [--allow-exec] [--version]

Options

Option	Default	Meaning
--conda-exe PATH	CONDA_EXE, then PATH	Target conda executable
--timeout SECONDS	900	Finite positive maximum timeout for discovery and execution
--output-limit-bytes BYTES	1048576	Positive retained-byte limit for each output stream
--stdin-limit-bytes BYTES	1048576	Positive UTF-8 byte limit for raw-tool input
--allow-write	disabled	Permit operations classified as mutations
--allow-exec	disabled	Permit arbitrary execution and expose conda_execute
--version		Print the server version and exit

conda mcp forwards these options to the same parser. It is unavailable when conda starts with --no-plugins. The standalone ccm command remains available.

The selected target must be a file. Windows batch launchers are rejected, so select conda.exe directly.

Startup behavior

At startup the server:

1. runs conda info --json against the target

2. discovers the target argparse command tree in a short-lived helper process

3. discovers external conda plugin entry points

4. creates an immutable tool catalog and capabilities resource

5. begins MCP stdio transport

The currently supported target conda range is >=26.7,<27.