Introducing the CodeTidy MCP Server: 62 Developer Tools for AI Agents

Every developer has the same workflow: you're working in Claude, Cursor, or another AI-powered editor, and you need to format some JSON, decode a Base64 string, or generate a UUID. You switch to a browser tab, paste your data into an online tool, copy the result back. Repeat dozens of times a day.

Today we're releasing the CodeTidy MCP Server — a free Model Context Protocol server that gives AI agents direct access to 62 developer tools. One command, zero configuration, everything runs locally on your machine.

npx @codetidy/mcp

What Is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard created by Anthropic that lets AI assistants use external tools. Think of it as a USB port for AI — a standardized way to plug capabilities into any AI client that supports the protocol.

Before MCP, every AI tool integration was custom-built. Each editor, each agent, each tool had its own proprietary plugin system. MCP changes that: build one server, and it works everywhere — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, Cline, and a growing list of clients.

What's Included: 62 Tools

The CodeTidy MCP server includes every text-based tool from codetidy.dev. Here's what your AI agent gets access to:

Formatters & Processors (33 tools)

The core of the toolkit. Format, minify, validate, encode, and decode:

• JSON: format, minify, validate, convert to CSV, convert to YAML
• Encoding: Base64 encode/decode, URL encode/decode, HTML entities
• Web languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, SQL — beautify and minify
• Text: uppercase, lowercase, trim, sort lines, unique lines, reverse lines, word count
• Tokens: JWT decode, Markdown to HTML

Generators (6 tools)

• UUID generation — v4 (random) and v7 (time-ordered), with bulk generation, uppercase, and no-dash options
• Password generation — configurable length, character sets, and count
• Lorem Ipsum — paragraphs, sentences, or words
• Slug generation, word counting, case conversion (camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case)

Converters (5 tools)

• Hash generation — MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512
• Epoch/timestamp conversion — Unix timestamps to human-readable dates
• chmod calculation — octal to symbolic and back
• Color conversion — HEX, RGB, HSL
• Regex testing — test patterns with match highlighting

Pipeline

The codetidy_pipeline tool chains multiple processors in sequence. Ask your AI agent to "decode this Base64, then format the JSON, then convert to YAML" — it handles the entire chain in a single tool call.

Plus 8 pre-built prompt recipes for common workflows like "Decode JWT & Pretty-Print" and "JSON Validate, Minify, Base64."

Setup: 30 Seconds

Claude Desktop

Open your claude_desktop_config.json and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codetidy": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@codetidy/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. You'll see the CodeTidy tools available in the tools menu.

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project root:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codetidy": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@codetidy/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Any MCP Client

Any client that supports stdio MCP servers works. Just point it at:

npx @codetidy/mcp

Why Local Matters

We wrote about why online dev tools can leak your secrets — researchers found that major JSON formatting sites had been logging user input, including API keys and passwords. The CodeTidy MCP server sidesteps this entirely:

• Everything runs locally. The server is a Node.js process on your machine communicating via stdio. No HTTP server, no network requests, no data exfiltration vectors.
• No telemetry. We don't track usage, collect analytics, or phone home. The server has zero network dependencies after install.
• Fully auditable. The npm package ships readable source — inspect every line in node_modules/@codetidy/mcp.

For security-sensitive workflows — decoding JWTs, formatting config files with credentials, hashing passwords — local processing isn't just nice to have, it's essential.

How It's Built

The MCP server shares the same processing logic as the codetidy.dev website tools. We vendor the core processor functions (the same ones that power the browser-based tools) into the MCP package, ensuring identical behavior whether you use the web tool or the AI agent version.

Technical details:

• Runtime: Node.js 18+ (uses crypto.randomUUID(), SubtleCrypto, and other modern APIs)
• Protocol: MCP over stdio — the simplest and most widely supported transport
• Dependencies: Only @modelcontextprotocol/sdk and zod (for input validation)
• Size: ~200KB installed. No native modules, no build step required.
• License: MIT

What's Next

This is v1.0. We're planning:

• More tools: As we add tools to codetidy.dev (currently 62+), text-based ones will automatically sync to the MCP server
• Streaming for large files: Web Worker-style chunked processing for multi-megabyte inputs
• Custom tool configurations: Set default indentation, hash algorithms, and other preferences

Get Started

Install in 30 seconds:

npx @codetidy/mcp

Full setup guide and tool catalog: codetidy.dev/mcp
npm: @codetidy/mcp

62 tools. One command. Zero data leaves your machine.