MCP server norte

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norte is a two-pane, orthodox file manager built for how people work now: a person at the keyboard, and an AI agent that also needs to touch files. One headless Rust core does the work. The terminal UI, the window, the CLI and the agent all talk to it through the same protocol, and everything an agent does passes through policy and is journaled with its author.

Why norte

⌨️ Orthodox, and fast

Two panes: one is where you are, the other is where things go. F-keys, a menu bar, a command palette and seven keymap presets — orthodox, vim, cua, krusader, far, norton and total-commander. Your muscle memory already works.

🧭 One core, every surface

A headless core with a stable, versioned protocol. ntc in any terminal, norte-gui as a native window, norte on the command line — all interchangeable clients of the same engine and the same journal.

🤖 Agents, governed

norte mcp serve lets Claude Code, Codex or any MCP client work on your files — inside a scope you grant, under rules you write, with every change journaled under the agent's session.

🔒 Yours, and only yours

No telemetry, not even opt-in. WASM plugins run sandboxed and ask for each capability. Remote hosts are pinned on first use. The journal is hash-chained and auditable.

Features

• Compare and sync two trees, locally or across hosts. norte compare and norte sync answer in the exit code, so they script cleanly; sync always shows its plan and asks before applying.
• A search index over any tree: norte index build / norte index query.
• AI suggestions, opt-in. norte ai produces a reviewable plan (e.g. a batch rename) that you confirm before anything moves.
• Disk map, tree view, details pane, bookmarks, history and a quick go-to that decodes each suggestion with the pane's own encoding.
• Shell integration: add eval "$(norte shell-init bash)" to your rc file and quitting norte leaves your shell where you were.
• Bring your VS Code theme: norte theme import.
• norte doctor and norte paths tell you what is loaded and where every file lives.

Themes

Ten built-in themes, live-switchable, in the terminal and the window alike — or import one from VS Code.

The same program, in a window

norte-gui is a native Tauri window over the same core. It ships as .deb, .rpm or AppImage and brings the norte and ntc binaries with it, so a clean install has a daemon to talk to.

Install

[!NOTE] Alpha. The current release, v0.3.0-alpha.16, ships x86_64 Linux binaries and, as a first preview, an unsigned x86_64 Windows installer and portable ZIP. macOS builds from source today. Interfaces and configuration may still change.

Two binaries, each with its own installer — ntc, the file manager, and norte, the command line (daemon, connections, policy, index, doctor):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/compilando/norte/releases/download/v0.3.0-alpha.16/norte-tui-installer.sh | sh
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/compilando/norte/releases/download/v0.3.0-alpha.16/norte-cli-installer.sh | sh

The links name the tag on purpose: GitHub's releases/latest skips pre-releases, and every alpha is one.

make setup prepares a fresh machine, even one without Rust or just. Then:

cargo install --path crates/norte-cli --locked   # the `norte` command
cargo install --path crates/norte-tui --locked   # the `ntc` file manager

Grab the .deb, .rpm or AppImage from the releases, or build it — this needs the system's WebKitGTK, GTK3 and libsoup3 development packages:

cargo install --path crates/norte-gui-tauri --locked

The window is a supported frontend with its own gate (just gui-ci). It is not yet exercised against screen readers, IME input or fractional scaling (#261), and the packages target a current glibc/WebKitGTK. The TUI remains the frontend with the most surface.

Quick start

norte tui                 # the file manager, in the current directory
norte tui ~/code          # ...somewhere else
norte tui --preset vim    # ...with your keys: orthodox, vim, cua, krusader,
                          #    far, norton or total-commander

norte tui hands over to ntc, which you can also run directly. It embeds the core, so there is nothing to start first. The norte command is the scriptable side:

norte ls ~/code                                         # ls, cp, mv, rm, mkdir, connect…
norte sync --mode update ~/photos /mnt/backup --dry-run # the plan, nothing touched
norte help keys                                         # the keys your preset really gives you

Agents, governed, not trusted

Most tools hand an agent your shell and hope. norte gives it a file interface with a gatekeeper.

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant A as Agent (Claude Code, Codex…)
    participant M as norte mcp serve
    participant P as Policy engine
    participant Y as You
    participant J as Journal
    A->>M: request_scope ~/projects/x
    M-->>Y: request_id to grant
    Y->>P: norte policy grant <id>
    A->>M: rename 40 files
    M->>P: allowed here?
    P-->>Y: ask (your rule said so)
    Y-->>P: approve
    P->>J: applied, hash-chained
    Y->>J: norte audit  (verify the chain, export it)

Hook it up in your agent's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "norte": { "command": "norte", "args": ["mcp", "serve", "--session", "mcp"] }
  }
}

Then write the rules. First match wins; without a policy, an agent is denied even inside a granted scope:

# policy.toml, in norte's config directory (`norte paths` shows where)
[[rule]]              # never let agents delete
op = "delete"
actor = "agent"
action = "deny"

[[rule]]              # nothing over SFTP
scheme = "sftp"
actor = "agent"
action = "deny"

[[rule]]              # everything else: ask me
action = "ask"

norte audit verifies the journal's hash chain and exports it. See docs/policy-example.toml for every knob.

Plugins

Plugins are WASM components (wasm32-wasip2) that run sandboxed, with only the capabilities you approve. The official ones:

Plugin	Kind	What it does
git-status	columns	Which files changed against the index
file-icons	decorator	An icon per entry: emoji, ASCII or Nerd Font
media-info	columns	Image dimensions and audio duration, from the header only
size-bar	columns	Each file's size as a █░ bar
age	columns	How long ago it changed: 3h, 2d, 5mo
markdown	previewer	Markdown rendered as styled lines
image-ansi	previewer	Images as half-block cells in the terminal
image-thumb	thumbnail	Verified thumbnails for the window's viewer
syntect	previewer	Syntax highlighting for the viewer
date-prefix	renamer	Proposes YYYY-MM-DD_name, reviewed before it runs
rename-log	hook	Keeps a .norte-renames.log of every rename

just plugins                        # build and install them all
norte plugin install <dir>          # install one — it arrives unapproved
norte plugin list                   # id, kind, approved, enabled, capabilities

A provider plugin can even serve a new URL scheme, such as webdav://. Start from plugins/template/ and the plugin author guide.

Architecture

flowchart LR
    subgraph clients [Clients]
        TUI["ntc<br/>terminal UI"]
        GUI["norte-gui<br/>Tauri window"]
        CLI["norte<br/>CLI"]
        MCP["norte mcp<br/>agents"]
    end
    subgraph core [norte core]
        PROTO(["protocol<br/>versioned"])
        ENG["engine<br/>tasks · trash"]
        POL["policy"]
        JRN[("journal<br/>hash-chained")]
        PLG["plugin host<br/>WASM sandbox"]
    end
    subgraph vfs [Virtual filesystem]
        LOCAL[local]
        SFTP[SFTP / FTP]
        OBJ[S3]
        ARC["ZIP · TAR · RAR"]
    end
    TUI & GUI & CLI & MCP --> PROTO --> ENG
    ENG --> POL --> JRN
    ENG --> PLG
    ENG --> LOCAL & SFTP & OBJ & ARC

The core runs embedded in any client or as a daemon over a Unix socket. Deep dives: ARCHITECTURE.md, the specification and 176 architecture decisions.

Roadmap

• Two-pane TUI with seven keymap presets
• SFTP, FTP, S3 and archives through one VFS
• MCP bridge with scopes, policy and journal
• WASM plugin system with per-capability consent
• norte-gui, a native window over the same core
• Releases built in CI for macOS and Windows
• Accessibility: screen readers, IME, fractional scaling (#261)
• Plugin signing and a registry

See the changelog for what landed in each alpha.

How norte is built

Most of norte's code is written with AI coding agents, mostly Claude Code: about four in five commits carry a Co-Authored-By: Claude line. The reasoning behind the code is recorded in the architecture decisions, and just ci (format, lint, tests, docs) is the gate before anything merges.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome — start with CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct.

make setup   # a fresh machine, with or without Rust or just
just ci      # format, lint, tests and docs — the gate before merging
just test    # the test suite, with cargo-nextest
make dev     # a debug build of the TUI
just hooks   # install the pre-push hook

The gates run locally — the CI, GUI and release workflows are disabled on GitHub; only the nightly remote-integration run and the manual Windows packaging run there — so install the hook. The toolchain is pinned in rust-toolchain.toml; the MSRV is at most stable minus two (currently 1.95, which wasmtime 48 needs).

Found a vulnerability? Please follow SECURITY.md instead of opening an issue.

License

norte follows the same split as Zed. The protocol, VFS providers, test kit and plugin SDK are MIT or Apache-2.0, so anyone can build clients, providers and plugins on them. The core and official frontends are AGPL-3.0-only. Each crate carries its own license files.

Telemetry

None. Not even opt-in. Diagnostics stay on your machine.