Heliograph MCP server

Heliograph is a free tool that runs commands on a machine you cannot log into yourself, like an air-gapped server or a client's locked-down system. It works by leaving your request somewhere both you and that machine can reach, and picking up the log afterwards. It is handy if you keep asking someone else to run things and paste the output back to you.

What this MCP server does

You tell your AI what you want to check or run on the far machine. The AI uses this helper to publish that request into a shared place, like a git repository or a file share. On the other side, a small script that someone there already started picks up the request and runs it. The output comes back as a log with every line stamped in UTC, so you can see what ran and how long each step took. Your AI then reads that log and tells you what it found.

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What you can do with it

• Send a command to a machine you cannot log into
• Follow a request while it runs and see its status
• Read the full log of the last run, with timestamps
• Spot long pauses in a log to see which step was slow
• Check whether the setup will work from where you are
• Plant the small script the far side needs to run

Try asking your AI

• “Send a disk space check to sql01 and sql02, then show me the log”
• “Look at the last run log and tell me where it stalled”
• “Check whether heliograph is set up correctly on this machine”
• “Publish a read-only request that lists the running services on the payments host”

What it gives back to you

You get back a log file with one line per output line, each stamped with the time it was produced. Your AI can summarise it, point out errors, or show you the raw text in the chat. If you ask for gaps, it also tells you which steps took the longest and how long each pause was. Nothing on the far machine changes unless the request was marked as an action and the operator allowed actions.

Before you start

Who it's for

People who need to check or run things on locked-down, air-gapped, or client-owned machines they cannot log into themselves, such as support engineers, SREs, and consultants.