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PnP PowerShell MCP server

The PnP PowerShell MCP server lets AI assistants work with PnP PowerShell. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the standard way for assistants such as GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor to use tools on your machine. With the server added to your assistant, you can ask in plain language for things like "list the sites created this month" or "write a script that reports on sharing links", and the assistant finds the right cmdlets, reads their documentation, runs them against your tenant, and drafts scripts from the PnP Script Samples.

The server is a separate community project in its own repository, and is published to the MCP Registry as io.github.pnp/pnp-powershell-mcp-server. It is in preview: its releases are versioned 0.x and marked as prereleases.

How it works

The server runs locally on your machine and runs the PnP PowerShell module installed there. It does not sign in by itself: it connects with Connect-PnPOnline and your own application registration, like any other PnP PowerShell script, so in Microsoft 365 it can only do what that account or application is permitted to do. On your machine, it runs PowerShell with your own permissions.

Installing it

You need PowerShell 7.4 or later and the PnP PowerShell module, see Installation. The server itself is installed as a .NET tool, which takes the .NET SDK:

dotnet tool install --global PnP.PowerShell.MCPServer --prerelease

Then add the pnp-powershell-mcp-server command to your assistant. In Claude Code, for instance:

claude mcp add pnp-powershell --scope user -- pnp-powershell-mcp-server

Or in the .vscode/mcp.json file of Visual Studio Code:

{
    "servers": {
        "PnP PowerShell MCP Server": {
            "type": "stdio",
            "command": "pnp-powershell-mcp-server"
        }
    }
}

The README of the server describes the setup for each assistant, the tools the server offers and all of its settings.

Staying in control

An assistant that can run PnP PowerShell can change your tenant. The server asks you to confirm commands whose verb deletes or revokes, such as the Remove-*, Clear-*, Reset-* and Revoke-* cmdlets, before it runs them; with an assistant that cannot show that question, it blocks them instead. All other commands run without asking, including the Set-*, Add-* and New-* cmdlets, and Add-PnPFile, which overwrites a file that already exists.

To let an assistant look but not touch, set the PNP_MCP_READONLY environment variable to true in the server configuration of your assistant. The server then refuses the commands whose verb changes things. As it goes by the verb, it is not a sandbox: a few cmdlets with a reading verb still change your tenant, such as Resolve-PnPFolder, which creates the folders it does not find. Connecting with an account or application that only has read permissions is what keeps your tenant unchanged.

Feedback

Report issues with the server and ideas for it in its own repository, and issues with the cmdlets it runs in the PnP PowerShell repository.

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