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Installation & Dependencies

Because mcp-tuikit orchestrates native terminal emulators and captures screenshots, it requires specific system-level dependencies depending on your operating system.

1. Core Dependencies

tmux (Required)

tmux is the backbone of mcp-tuikit for session management and PTY creation. It must be installed on your system.

bash brew install tmux

bash sudo apt install tmux # or sudo dnf install tmux

Windows support relies on a native Win32 port of tmux. Do not use MSYS2 or WSL tmux if running the MCP natively on Windows. powershell winget install arndawg.tmux-windows

2. Platform-Specific Dependencies

Depending on whether you want native terminal rendering or headless Playwright rendering, you'll need the following:

macOS

macOS relies on built-in tools (osascript, screencapture, CGWindowList) to capture native terminal windows (iTerm2, Terminal.app, Ghostty, Alacritty, WezTerm, Kitty).

  • No extra tools required beyond the terminal emulators themselves.

Linux

To run headless native terminals, Linux requires a virtual compositor or X server.

  • Wayland (Native): Requires a Wayland compositor like sway (along with grim for screenshots) or KDEskwin(kwin_wayland`).
  • X11 (Legacy): Requires Xvfb (virtual framebuffer), x11-apps, and imagemagick (for screenshots).
# Ubuntu/Debian example for headless dependencies
sudo apt install xvfb imagemagick sway grim

Windows

Windows relies on native APIs for standard process spawning (cmd, powershell, Windows Terminal).

  • No extra tools required beyond the native terminal apps.

3. Installing the MCP Server

You can run mcp-tuikit directly via npx (which handles fetching the latest Node.js dependencies):

npx -y @dragoscirjan/mcp-tuikit

(Note: Playwright is used internally for the xterm.js backend and will automatically download its Chromium binary on first run).

4. Verifying Dependencies

mcp-tuikit includes a built-in MCP tool to verify that your system meets all requirements for your configured backend:

  • Tool: check_system_dependencies
  • Description: Checks if the host system has all required dependencies installed (e.g., tmux, Xvfb, imagemagick, sway, grim, spectacle). Returns a detailed list of installed and missing tools.