MCP Server

AVC includes a built-in Model Context Protocol server. Any agent that speaks MCP can call AVC’s commands as tools — no separate process to manage, no HTTP layer to configure.

Start the server

avc mcp serve              # default pretty-printed output
avc mcp serve --compact    # compact JSON for token-sensitive contexts

The server runs over stdio: it reads JSON-RPC 2.0 messages on stdin and writes responses on stdout. Agent frameworks spawn it as a subprocess.

Available tools

Tool	Maps to
`avc_snapshot`	`avc snapshot`
`avc_list`	`avc list`
`avc_info`	`avc info`
`avc_delete`	`avc delete`
`avc_diff`	`avc diff`
`avc_restore`	`avc restore`
`avc_branch_create`	`avc branch create`
`avc_branch_list`	`avc branch list`
`avc_branch_switch`	`avc branch switch`
`avc_branch_diff`	`avc branch diff`
`avc_merge_preview`	`avc merge --preview`
`avc_merge`	`avc merge`
`avc_merge_abort`	`avc merge --abort`
`avc_run_in_workspace`	Run a shell command inside a branch workspace

Each tool’s JSON Schema is published via tools/list so the agent can discover them programmatically.

Don’t configure it by hand

Use the one-shot setup instead:

avc init --skills claude-code,cursor,windsurf,generic

This writes the right config files for each framework into your project. See the per-framework guides:

Manual integration

For custom agents not covered by --skills, here’s the minimal config snippet:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "avc": {
      "command": "avc",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve", "--compact"]
    }
  }
}

Drop that into whatever MCP config file your framework uses. Most frameworks (Claude Desktop, Cline, etc.) follow this convention.

When the agent should use each tool

AVC ships agent skill files (e.g., .claude/skills/avc-snapshot/SKILL.md) that document when to call which tool. These are written by avc init --skills and serve as instructions to the agent — “always snapshot before risky changes”, “use branches for non-trivial refactors”, etc.

If you write your own agent, you can copy the skill files as a starting point for your prompt engineering.