IDA Pro MCP

中文版 | English

MCP Server for IDA Pro reverse engineering. Fork of mrexodia/ida-pro-mcp with multi-binary pool proxy and infrastructure improvements.

What's different from upstream?

This fork adds:

• idalib-pool — a proxy server that manages a pool of idalib instances for concurrent multi-binary analysis
• Unix domain socket support for idalib server (avoids TCP port conflicts)
• execute_sync deadlock fix for headless idalib mode
• Bearer token authentication (--auth-token / IDA_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN)
• stdio / HTTP / SSE transport for the pool proxy

For the original IDA Pro MCP plugin (GUI mode, tool documentation, prompt engineering, etc.), see the upstream: mrexodia/ida-pro-mcp.

Three ways to run

Mode	Command	Use case
GUI plugin	ida-pro-mcp	Connecting to IDA Pro with GUI open
Headless single	idalib-mcp [binary]	Analyzing one binary without GUI
Headless pool	idalib-pool [binary]	Analyzing multiple binaries concurrently

idalib-pool: Multi-Binary Analysis

The pool proxy manages multiple idalib instances behind a single MCP endpoint. Each instance holds one active IDB — no in-process switching overhead.

MCP Client
    │
    ▼  stdio / HTTP :8750
┌───────────────────────────┐
│  idalib-pool (proxy)       │
│  routes by session_id      │
└───┬───────────┬────────────┘
    │           │
  unix sock   unix sock
    ▼           ▼
┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐
│ idalib#0 │ │ idalib#1 │
│ httpd    │ │ libcrypto│
└─────────┘ └─────────┘

Key features

• 1 instance = 1 session: no IDB switching, no thrashing
• Optional session_id on every IDA tool: omit for default session, specify for explicit routing. Parallel calls to different sessions are safe.
• idalib_switch only changes the default session pointer — zero IDB cost
• LRU eviction when pool is full (--max-instances N)
• Unlimited mode (--max-instances 0): fresh instance per open, destroy on close
• Path dedup: re-opening the same binary returns the existing session

Usage

# stdio (default, for MCP clients like Claude Desktop)
idalib-pool

# stdio with initial binary
idalib-pool /path/to/binary

# HTTP/SSE mode
idalib-pool --transport http://127.0.0.1:8750

# Multi-instance pool
idalib-pool --max-instances 3

# With authentication
idalib-pool --auth-token mysecret
# or: IDA_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=mysecret idalib-pool

Workflow example

idalib_open("/firmware/httpd")        → session "httpd-01" (default)
idalib_open("/firmware/libcrypto.so") → session "crypto-01"

# Explicit routing — parallel safe
decompile("main", session_id="httpd-01")
decompile("SSL_connect", session_id="crypto-01")

# Or switch default and omit session_id
idalib_switch("crypto-01")
decompile("SSL_connect")  → routes to crypto-01

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• IDA Pro 8.3+ (9.0+ recommended) with idalib — IDA Free is not supported
• Set IDADIR to your IDA installation path

Installation

pip install https://github.com/zh-explorer/ida-pro-mcp/archive/refs/heads/dev.zip

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/zh-explorer/ida-pro-mcp
cd ida-pro-mcp
uv run idalib-pool

Docker Deployment

Note: Due to IDA Pro licensing restrictions, we do not provide the IDA Pro base image. You need to build an ida-pro:latest Docker image yourself that contains a licensed IDA Pro (with idalib) installation.

Build

docker build -t ida-mcp .

Run

docker run -p 8745:8745 -v /path/to/binaries:/data ida-mcp

Mount the binaries to analyze into the /data directory. The MCP service listens on 0.0.0.0:8745 by default.

Environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
TRANSPORT	http://0.0.0.0:8745	Transport URL
MAX_INSTANCES	10	Max concurrent idalib instances

Connect from Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user ida-pro-mcp http://<host>:8745/mcp

MCP Client Configuration

Claude Code / Claude Desktop (stdio, recommended):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ida-pro-mcp": {
      "command": "idalib-pool"
    }
  }
}

HTTP/SSE mode:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ida-pro-mcp": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:8750/mcp"
    }
  }
}

From source with uv:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ida-pro-mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/ida-pro-mcp", "idalib-pool"]
    }
  }
}

Session Management Tools

Tool	Description
idalib_open(path, session_id?)	Open a binary, auto-assign to an instance
idalib_close(session_id)	Close a session (saves IDB)
idalib_switch(session_id)	Set the default session (no IDB cost)
idalib_list()	List all sessions
idalib_current()	Get the default session info
idalib_save(path?)	Save the active IDB

IDA Tools

66 tools from upstream ida-pro-mcp, all with optional session_id routing. See the upstream documentation for details:

• Decompilation & disassembly (decompile, disasm)
• Cross-references & call graphs (xrefs_to, callees, callgraph)
• Function & global listing (list_funcs, list_globals, imports)
• Memory operations (get_bytes, get_int, get_string, patch)
• Type operations (declare_type, set_type, infer_types, read_struct)
• Rename & comment (rename, set_comments)
• Pattern search (find, find_bytes, find_regex)
• Binary survey (survey_binary — start here for triage)
• Python execution (py_eval)

Acknowledgments

Fork of mrexodia/ida-pro-mcp by @mrexodia. Multi-binary pool proxy developed with @WinMin.