External-only MCP (Model Context Protocol) adapter that exposes CLEO sentient operations as MCP tools for consumption by external LLM clients and tools.

Canon (DO NOT violate): CLEO is CLI-only internally. This adapter is EXTERNAL-ONLY — an export bridge that lets other tools (Claude Desktop, external MCP clients) consume a narrow slice of CLEO via MCP. It communicates with CLEO exclusively via cleo CLI subprocess calls. It does NOT import internal CLEO packages and is NOT part of CLEO's dispatch surface.

Do NOT add MCP to internal CLEO dispatch. Do NOT import from @cleocode/core or any internal dispatch layer here. Do NOT add new tools by reaching into internal APIs — new tools MUST be exposed as cleo CLI verbs first, then mapped here as subprocess calls. MCP was removed from internal CLEO on 2026-04-04; this adapter exists as a deliberate external-consumption exception, not as a reintroduction.

What it exposes

Three MCP tools:

Tool	CLI equivalent	Description
`cleo_sentient_status`	`cleo sentient status`	Query sentient subsystem state, kill-switch, Tier-2 flag
`cleo_sentient_propose_list`	`cleo sentient propose list`	List Tier-2 autonomous proposals
`cleo_sentient_propose_enable`	`cleo sentient propose enable`	Enable Tier-2 (subject to M7 gate)

How external tools consume it

1. Via MCP stdio transport (recommended)

Add to your MCP client configuration (e.g. Claude Code .mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cleo-sentient": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cleocode/mcp-adapter"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Or if installed globally:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cleo-sentient": {
      "command": "cleo-mcp-server",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

The server reads JSON-RPC 2.0 requests from stdin and writes responses to stdout.

2. Via programmatic API

import { handleToolCall } from '@cleocode/mcp-adapter';

// Query status
const result = await handleToolCall(
  'cleo_sentient_status',
  { projectRoot: '/path/to/my/project' }
);
console.log(result.content[0].text);

// Enable proposals (requires M7 gate to pass on CLEO side)
const enableResult = await handleToolCall(
  'cleo_sentient_propose_enable',
  { projectRoot: '/path/to/my/project' }
);
if (enableResult.isError) {
  console.error('M7 gate blocked:', enableResult.content[0].text);
}

M7 Gate

cleo_sentient_propose_enable is subject to the M7 gate on the CLEO side: cleo memory doctor --assert-clean must pass (brain corpus must be clean) before Tier-2 proposals can be activated. The adapter surfaces the E_M7_GATE_FAILED error as isError: true in the MCP result so clients receive a clear actionable signal.

To resolve: run cleo memory sweep --approve <runId> on the CLEO project to stamp entries clean, then retry the enable call.

Architecture

External MCP client (Claude Code / LLM tool)
        │
        │ JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio
        ▼
@cleocode/mcp-adapter (this package)
        │
        │ execFile('cleo', [...args])
        ▼
CLEO CLI (`cleo` binary on $PATH)
        │
        │ internal dispatch + sentient domain
        ▼
sentient-state.json + tasks.db

No internal CLEO packages are imported. All interaction is via subprocess.