AI assistants

stackvo-mcp is an MCP server over the same core the window drives. An assistant can answer "why is shop.loc not loading?" from the preflight report, the hosts file, the certificate and the container's last hundred log lines — with no window open.

What an assistant is told about this project, and what it may do.

Registering it

Settings → AI assistants lists the eight clients found on this machine — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, Zed — and registers the server in one click. Each client's own config file is read, one stackvo entry is inserted, and the file is written back with every other server in it intact. A .stackvo-backup copy is kept first.

The leash: read-only by default

You grant access with switches, and the pane writes back the sentence your choice amounts to — "this assistant may restart shop, for the next half hour".

Setting	Effect
(default)	Reads only. 26 of the 38 tools.
Allow writes	Adds the 12 mutating tools — start, stop, restart, reissue the certificate, take a snapshot, and stack_down, which stops everything.
Bound to a project	Only that project's four writing tools are offered; the eight no project can bound are not offered at all.
Time limit	The writing half ends by itself after the time you set.
Tool by tool	Only the tools you name.

Read the list before allowing writes: it includes stopping the whole stack and stopping a shared service every project depends on.

What it never does

• No tool returns a password. A test asserts no schema on this surface has a password, secret or token property.
• Restoring a snapshot is not a tool. Taking one is — it adds a file. Writing over live rows belongs to the app's own confirmation.
• Every writing call is logged, refusals included, in Settings → Audit trail — most entries carrying what would put the act back, so it can be reversed in one click.

Telling the assistant when to use it

Settings → AI rules writes a short section into the instruction file the assistant already reads — CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .cursor/rules/, .github/instructions/, .windsurf/rules/, GEMINI.md. Only the region between StackVo's own markers is ever written; the rest of the file comes back byte for byte.

A sandbox for the task

Give the assistant a worktree with an expiry rather than your machine: its own branch, its own address, its own database, gone when the time is up.