wslc-mcp

MCP server that teaches AI coding agents how wslc works — the native Linux container runtime in the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which runs containers on Windows 11 without Docker Desktop.

Models are consistently wrong about wslc because it is new and its limits are non-obvious. This server gives them ground truth: real command translation, Compose migration analysis, and the tool-compatibility rule that explains most migration surprises.

Install

Claude Code:

claude mcp add wslc -- npx -y wslc-mcp

Cursor / Windsurf / Zed — add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wslc": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "wslc-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

No API key, no network calls, no telemetry. Translation is entirely local and rule-driven.

Tools

| Tool | Use it for | |------|-----------| | convert_docker_command | Translate a docker command to wslc, with notes on dropped or rewritten flags | | analyze_compose | Turn a docker-compose.yml into wslc run commands and list what cannot migrate | | check_tool_compatibility | "Does Testcontainers / Portainer / act work with wslc?" | | check_devcontainer | Validate devcontainer.json and get the required VS Code setting | | get_wslc_limitations | What you give up moving off Docker Desktop |

Example

You: convert docker run --gpus all --restart always -p 80:80 nginx for wslc

wslc run --gpus all -p 80:80 nginx

Migration notes:
- [warn] Restart policies are not implemented in the wslc preview. Flag dropped — use a
  Windows scheduled task or a wrapper script for auto-restart.
- [info] `--gpus` is native in wslc 2.9.4, but the host must actually have the GPU: on a
  machine without one, `--gpus all` fails at container init with an ldconfig error.

Verdict: degraded (flags changed)

The rule worth knowing

CLI-driven tooling ports to wslc. API-driven tooling does not.

wslc is daemonless: no dockerd, no socket, no Engine API. So anything that opens a Docker socket cannot attach, while anything that shells out to a binary works fine once you point it at wslc.

That single distinction explains why VS Code Dev Containers works (it invokes a CLI — set dev.containers.dockerPath to wslc) while Testcontainers cannot (it opens a socket). No amount of DOCKER_HOST configuration changes that.

Related

• docker2wslc on npm and PyPI — the same engine as a CLI
• Interactive converter — https://wslcontainers.com
• Command cheat sheet — https://wslcontainers.com/reference/cheatsheet/

Accuracy

Rules target the 2026-07 wslc public preview and live in a single rules.json shared with the CLI packages and the VS Code extension. wslc is a moving target — if a mapping is wrong, open an issue with the command and the actual wslc output.

MIT licensed.