Image Builder MCP

Overview

The Image Builder MCP provides a lightweight, protocol‑driven interface for interacting with the hosted Image Builder service from Red Hat. By exposing a Model Context Protocol server, it allows AI assistants—such as Claude—to query, create, and manage image build jobs directly from conversational or programmatic workflows. This eliminates the need for developers to manually invoke REST APIs, handle authentication tokens, or parse complex JSON responses. Instead, a single MCP call can trigger an entire image build pipeline and return status updates in real time.

At its core, the server authenticates against Red Hat’s console using a service account. The credentials are supplied via environment variables, ensuring that sensitive secrets never travel over the network in plain text. Once authenticated, the MCP exposes a set of resources that mirror the capabilities of the hosted Image Builder API: listing available build templates, submitting new builds, monitoring progress, and retrieving artifacts. The server supports both SSE (Server‑Sent Events) for streaming updates and a simple stdio mode, giving developers flexibility to choose the integration style that best fits their toolchain.

Key features include:

• Real‑time build monitoring – The SSE mode streams incremental status messages, allowing AI assistants to provide live feedback or trigger downstream actions as a build progresses.
• Simplified authentication – By leveraging service accounts and environment‑based secrets, developers can avoid manual token management.
• Tool‑agnostic integration – The MCP server is designed to work with any client that speaks the protocol, including IDE extensions (VS Code), chat‑based assistants, or custom scripts.
• Containerized deployment – The server can be run in a Docker or Podman container, making it easy to ship and orchestrate in CI/CD pipelines.

Typical use cases include:

1. Automated OS image delivery – An AI assistant can be instructed to “build a Fedora 39 image with custom packages” and the MCP will handle the entire request, returning the final artifact URL once complete.
2. Continuous integration pipelines – A CI system can invoke the MCP to spin up a fresh build for every commit, ensuring that artifacts are always built in a clean environment.
3. Developer onboarding – New team members can launch complex image builds from within their IDE, without needing to understand the underlying REST API or authentication flow.

By integrating with existing MCP‑compatible workflows, the Image Builder MCP enables developers to treat image construction as a first‑class capability of their AI assistants. This abstraction not only speeds up development cycles but also guarantees that image builds are reproducible, auditable, and tightly coupled to the same authentication mechanisms used across Red Hat’s ecosystem.