LightCraft MCP: a photo editor your agent can drive

Two ways to run it

Add --library DIR to work on a persistent library, so ratings and edits survive between sessions. A library is open in one program at a time: while the desktop app has it open, use connect mode.

Get lightcraft-cli

• macOS: the release ships it separately as lightcraft-cli-0.6.0-macos-universal.zip (signed and notarized). Use it with the app from the same release.
• Windows: the MSI installs lightcraft-cli.exe next to the app, by default in C:\Program Files\LightCraft. It is not on PATH.
• Linux: the .deb and .rpm packages install /usr/bin/lightcraft-cli.
• From source: cargo build --release -p lightcraft-cli.

Set up with Claude Code

# headless, with a folder of photos imported at start
claude mcp add lightcraft -- /path/to/lightcraft-cli mcp ~/Pictures/shoot

# or drive the running desktop app (start it with: lightcraft --control 7980)
claude mcp add lightcraft-app -- /path/to/lightcraft-cli mcp --connect 127.0.0.1:7980

Or check a project-scoped .mcp.json into your repository:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightcraft": {
      "command": "/path/to/lightcraft-cli",
      "args": ["mcp", "--connect", "127.0.0.1:7980"]
    }
  }
}

For Codex, register the same command with codex mcp add, using absolute paths.

What the agent gets

• Library: import, query_photos, select_photos.
• Develop: list_controls (every slider with its range and current value), get_develop, set_develop, apply_preset, crop.
• See and save: render_photo returns the photo as an image the model can look at; export writes JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF, DNG or the original with an XMP sidecar.
• Everything else: list_commands and run_command, plus one cmd_* tool per command in the registry (--compact leaves those out).
• Connect mode adds: screenshot, inspect_ui, click, press_key, type_text and pointer_gesture for brush strokes, gradients and crop handles.

Prompts to try

• “Import ~/Pictures/shoot, flag the sharpest frame of each burst as a pick and reject the rest.”
• “Render the active photo, then lift the shadows and recover the sky until it looks balanced. Show me before and after.”
• “Add a radial mask on the subject’s face, raise its exposure slightly, and export a 2048 px JPEG.”

Without MCP: the CLI on its own

# Import, edit and export in one command
lightcraft-cli run --import ~/Pictures/a.dng \
  develop.set control=light.exposure value=0.7 \
  app.export path=/tmp/a.jpg shortEdge=1080

# Render one file with settings
lightcraft-cli render in.dng -o out.jpg --set light.exposure=0.5 --size 2048

And in the browser?

The web build exposes the same command registry to JavaScript on its own page: await lightcraft.command("library.info", "{}") runs any command and resolves to its JSON result. That is what this site’s AI panel uses to read your sliders and apply suggestions. It is a page-level API, not an MCP server.

FAQ

Source: LightCraft’s MCP documentation and control protocol. Flags can change between releases; check lightcraft-cli --help.