MCP Server CLI

This page covers local MCP server lifecycle commands.

Transport Contract

Only stdio and streamable-http are supported. A local command-launched MCP client uses stdio. A URL-based local or remote MCP client uses Streamable HTTP. Legacy SSE is not supported.

This release covers localhost server operation only. Remote deployment, authentication, TLS, and reverse-proxy configuration are deferred; do not expose the unauthenticated example endpoint to a network.

Background HTTP Server

Command	Purpose
`nilo server run`	Start the streamable HTTP MCP server in the background.
`nilo server status`	Show whether the server is running, plus PID, URL, and log path.
`nilo server stop`	Stop the background server process.
`nilo server logs`	Read background server logs.
`nilo server remove`	Stop the server and remove local runtime state. Logs are deleted by default.

The default local server command is:

nilo server run --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

The MCP URL is:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp

Common management commands:

nilo server status
nilo server logs --tail 100
nilo server stop
nilo server remove

If a process does not exit normally, force stop it:

nilo server stop --force

Stdio Server

For command-based MCP clients that launch a stdio process, use:

nilo server stdio

This command runs in the foreground until the MCP client closes it or the user interrupts it.

Short Aliases

Server commands have explicit short aliases, including server/srv, run/start, stdio/pipe, status/stat, stop/halt, logs/tail, and remove/rm.

nilo srv start --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000
nilo srv stat
nilo srv pipe

Serve Alias

nilo serve ... is a compatibility alias for nilo server ...:

nilo serve run --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

New documentation should prefer nilo server ....

For MCP client configuration fields, see MCP Clients.