@orygn/opa-mcp

OPA MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that turns any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, and others) into a first-class Open Policy Agent and Rego authoring environment.

+--------------------+ MCP/stdio  +-----------------+ spawn/HTTP +---------------------+
|  Claude · Cursor · |----------> | @orygn/opa-mcp  |----------> | opa · regal         |
|   VS Code · ...    |<---------- |                 |<---------- | conftest · REST API  |
+--------------------+  52 tools  +-----------------+            +---------------------+

Status: v0.4.0. Tool surface, error codes, and environment variables follow SemVer from v0.1.0 forward.

Upgrading to 0.4.0: subprocesses no longer inherit the server's environment. A policy that read a variable through opa.runtime().env will no longer see it; name the variable in OPA_MCP_PASSTHROUGH_ENV if it is genuinely needed. See the security section for why.

Upgrading to 0.3.0: the bundled OPA is now 1.19, so Rego v0 policies no longer parse (if is required before a rule body, contains before a partial set). Run rego_migrate_v1 to convert them. If you supply your own binary via OPA_BINARY or PATH, nothing changes.

Table of contents

• What you can do with it
• Why this MCP
• Install
• Configuration
• Tool reference
• Prompts
• Resources
• Cookbook
• Architecture
• Security
• Troubleshooting
• Development
• Versioning & support
• License

What you can do with it

Once an MCP client is connected, an agent can:

• Author Rego. Generate, format, and refactor policies. The server runs the real opa fmt and opa parse so output is byte-identical to what you'd get on the command line, and regal (optional) surfaces idiomatic suggestions.
• Evaluate against data. Run a query against a policy and an input document. Optional --explain, --profile, and --coverage flags surface execution traces, hot rules, and per-line coverage.
• Debug a deny. rego_explain_decision walks the agent through every rule that fired (and every one that didn't), so it can answer "why was this rejected" without you reading the trace by hand.
• Manage policies on a running OPA. List, get, put, delete policies on an OPA server through its REST API. Works against a local opa run --server or a production deployment with bearer-token auth.
• Build & sign bundles. Package a directory of policies into a deployable bundle, optionally signing it. Output is a regular .tar.gz the agent can hand to your delivery system.
• Lint. rego_lint runs Regal across a directory or a single file and returns each finding with its category, level and location.

A walk-through of a typical session lives in Cookbook.

Why this MCP

OPA already has a perfectly good CLI and REST API. So why an MCP wrapper?

• Schema-shaped tool surface. An agent calling rego_eval gets a validated input schema, a structured output envelope, and stable error codes, instead of parsing free-form CLI text and inventing its own failure taxonomy. That alone makes Rego usable to an agent the way a language server makes a language usable to an IDE.
• Higher-level helpers. rego_explain_decision, rego_generate_test_skeleton, rego_describe_policy, and rego_suggest_fix compose the lower-level primitives into the tasks agents are actually asked to do. They don't exist in the OPA CLI.
• Curated knowledge. The bundled MCP resources expose the OPA built-in function catalog, the official Rego style guide (formatted for LLMs), and a curated pattern library covering RBAC, ABAC, Kubernetes admission, IaC gates, API authz, and rate limiting, so the agent has authoritative context without needing to scrape it.
• Safety boundaries the agent can rely on. Path allow-list, subprocess timeouts, and response-size caps. Defaults are conservative; running the server doesn't quietly grant the agent more reach than the operator intended.

If you've ever watched an agent fight opa eval's argument order, you'll recognize the gap this fills.

Install

The server runs locally over stdio. Pick the install path that matches your client.

Claude Desktop

Edit claude_desktop_config.json directly (or copy from examples/claude-desktop.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "opa": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@orygn/opa-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "OPA_BINARY": "/usr/local/bin/opa",
        "REGAL_BINARY": "/usr/local/bin/regal",
        "OPA_URL": "http://localhost:8181",
        "OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS": "/path/to/your/policies"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace the /usr/local/bin/... paths with your real ones. See the first-time install gotcha below. Windows users substitute C:\\path\\to\\opa.exe.

Or download opa-mcp.mcpb from the latest release and double-click it.

Alternatively, use the Smithery one-liner:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @orygn/opa-mcp --client claude

Claude Code (CLI)

Register the server for the current project with claude mcp add:

claude mcp add \
  --env OPA_BINARY=/usr/local/bin/opa \
  --env REGAL_BINARY=/usr/local/bin/regal \
  --env OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS=/path/to/your/policies \
  opa -- npx -y @orygn/opa-mcp

This writes the config into .mcp.json at your project root and is picked up automatically on every claude session in that directory. Add --scope user to register it globally instead.

Replace the paths with your real absolute paths (same caveat as Claude Desktop above). On Windows use C:\path\to\opa.exe syntax.

Persistent context and auto-checks for policy repos. If you work in an OPA policy repo regularly, two extra files remove repetitive setup from every session:

• examples/CLAUDE.md -- copy to your repo root or .claude/CLAUDE.md. Claude Code loads it every session, so the agent always knows which tools to use and what conventions apply.
• examples/claude-code-hook.json -- merge the hooks block into .claude/settings.json. Runs opa check automatically after any .rego file is written, so syntax errors surface immediately without a manual tool call.

Cursor

Drop examples/cursor.json into either .cursor/mcp.json (project-scoped) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (user-scoped).

VS Code (GitHub Copilot Chat)

Drop examples/vscode.json into .vscode/mcp.json, or paste the servers block into your user settings.json under mcp.servers.

Windsurf, Zed, and others

See examples/ for a full set of drop-in configs.

Manual install (any MCP client)

npm install -g @orygn/opa-mcp
opa-mcp --version

then point your client at the opa-mcp binary.

Docker

docker pull orygn/opa-mcp:latest
docker run --rm -i \
  -v /path/to/your/policies:/policies:ro \
  -e OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS=/policies \
  orygn/opa-mcp

The image is multi-arch (linux/amd64, linux/arm64), bundles pinned versions of opa and regal, and runs as a non-root user. No host install of OPA or Regal is required.

⚠ First-time install gotcha (read this if you used npx or the global install)

If your client's PATH doesn't include the directory where opa lives (this happens with Claude Desktop on Windows and macOS by default), the server boots fine but every tool call returns OPA_BINARY_NOT_FOUND.

Fix: add OPA_BINARY and REGAL_BINARY env entries to your client config with the absolute path to each binary. The example configs under examples/ ship with placeholder paths you replace. Find the real paths with:

which opa && which regal                                    # macOS / Linux

Get-Command opa, regal | Select-Object Source              # Windows

This does not affect the Docker install path, which ships opa and regal in the image and bypasses PATH entirely. The MCPB bundle carries neither, and unlike the npm install has no bundled fallback: set OPA_BINARY or put opa on PATH. See Troubleshooting for full detail.

Configuration

The server reads its configuration from environment variables. Every variable is optional; defaults are sensible for a local OPA on http://localhost:8181.

Variable	Default	Purpose
OPA_URL	http://localhost:8181	Base URL of an OPA REST endpoint, used by opa_* tools.
OPA_TOKEN	(unset)	Bearer token for OPA, if your instance requires auth. Treated as a secret. Never echoed in logs or tool responses.
OPA_BINARY	opa (on PATH)	Path to the opa CLI, used by rego_* tools.
REGAL_BINARY	regal (on PATH)	Path to the regal linter. Required by rego_lint, rego_fix, and rego_security_audit.
CONFTEST_BINARY	conftest (on PATH)	Path to the conftest binary. Only required by conftest_* tools. Returns CONFTEST_NOT_FOUND if absent.
OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS	(unset)	Comma- or semicolon-separated list of directories the server is allowed to read policies from. When unset, file-based tools refuse to read from disk.
OPA_MCP_LOG_FILE	<tmpdir>/orygn-opa-mcp.log	Path the server appends logs to. The server never writes to stdout; that channel is reserved for the MCP protocol.
OPA_MCP_LOG_LEVEL	info	One of debug, info, warn, error.
OPA_MCP_MAX_RESPONSE_BYTES	100000	Hard cap on a single tool response. Larger payloads are truncated with a __truncated: true marker.
OPA_MCP_TIMEOUT_MS	30000	Hard timeout for any spawned subprocess (opa, regal). After this, the child gets SIGTERM and then SIGKILL.
OPA_MCP_HTTP_TIMEOUT_MS	15000	Timeout for HTTP requests to the OPA REST API.
OPA_MCP_NO_TELEMETRY	(unset)	Set to 1 to disable the anonymous startup ping. The ping sends the server version, OS platform, and a random install ID. The install ID is stored at ~/.orygn/opa-mcp/install-id and is generated once on first run. No policy content or file paths are ever sent.
OPA_MCP_MAX_SUBPROCESS_BYTES	33554432 (32 MiB)	Maximum bytes captured from a subprocess's stdout and stderr, counted separately. On overflow the stream is clamped, the child is stopped, and the tool returns OUTPUT_TOO_LARGE. Distinct from OPA_MCP_MAX_RESPONSE_BYTES, which trims the reply after the output is already in memory.
OPA_MCP_PASSTHROUGH_ENV	(unset)	Comma-separated variable names to pass through to opa, regal and conftest. Everything else is withheld. Anything named here is readable by any policy the server evaluates, via opa.runtime().env, so use it only for values that are safe in that position.
OPA_MCP_BLOCK_ENV	(unset)	Comma-separated variable names to withhold from opa, regal and conftest even when they are on the built-in allow-list. Applied last, so it also overrides OPA_MCP_PASSTHROUGH_ENV. Use it to drop the proxy variables, which can carry credentials, at the cost of proxy support.

Paths in OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS and the *_BINARY variables must be absolute. Relative paths and missing binaries are rejected with structured errors.

Tool reference

Every tool returns a JSON envelope:

{ "ok": true, "data": { ... }, "warnings": [ ... ] }
{ "ok": false, "error": { "code": "INVALID_REGO", "message": "...", "hint": "...", "details": { ... } } }

Stable error codes: INVALID_INPUT, INVALID_REGO, INVALID_BUNDLE, EVAL_ERROR, OPA_BINARY_NOT_FOUND, REGAL_NOT_FOUND, CONFTEST_NOT_FOUND, OPA_UNREACHABLE, OPA_AUTH_FAILED, POLICY_NOT_FOUND, DATA_NOT_FOUND, PATH_NOT_ALLOWED, PATH_NOT_FOUND, NO_TESTS_FOUND, COVERAGE_BELOW_THRESHOLD, OPA_VERSION_UNSUPPORTED, GITHUB_TOKEN_MISSING, GIST_CREATE_FAILED, OUTPUT_TOO_LARGE, TIMEOUT, CANCELLED, UNKNOWN_ERROR.

Category A: Authoring & static analysis

Operate on Rego source code without needing a running OPA server. Wrap opa fmt, opa parse, opa check, opa inspect, opa capabilities, opa deps, and regal.

Tool	What it does
rego_format	Format Rego source. Wraps opa fmt. Idempotent.
rego_check	Type-check and validate Rego. Wraps opa check.
rego_lint	Run Regal across a file or directory. Returns each violation with its category, level and location. Requires regal on PATH or REGAL_BINARY set.
rego_parse_ast	Parse Rego to AST JSON. Wraps opa parse.
rego_inspect	Inspect a bundle or directory: packages, rules, annotations. Wraps opa inspect.
rego_capabilities	List the built-ins and features the resolved opa binary understands (OPA_BINARY, then PATH, then the bundled copy)
rego_deps	Static dependency analysis: rule-level data references and cross-package calls.
rego_migrate_v1	Migrate Rego v0 source to v1 syntax. Runs opa fmt --rego-v1 then validates with opa check --v1-compatible. Returns { original, migrated, changed, valid, errors }.
rego_check_schema	Check Rego against a JSON Schema. Validates that every input.* field the policy reads exists in the schema using opa check --schema. Accepts inline schema or a path to a JSON Schema file on disk.

Featured: rego_format

// Input
{
  "source": "package x\nallow if input.user==\"admin\""
}

// Output (ok)
{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "formatted": "package x\n\nallow if input.user == \"admin\"\n",
    "changed": true
  }
}

Featured: rego_check

// Input
{
  "source": "package x\nallow if y",
  "strict": true
}

// Output (error path; the JSON diagnostics arrive on stderr from opa)
{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "valid": false,
    "errors": [
      {
        "code": "rego_unsafe_var_error",
        "message": "var y is unsafe",
        "location": { "row": 2, "col": 11 }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Category B: Evaluation & testing

Run a query against a policy and input. Wrap opa eval, opa test, and opa bench.

Tool	What it does
rego_eval	Evaluate a query against a policy and input. The bread-and-butter tool.
rego_eval_with_explain	Evaluate with --explain=full and return a structured trace.
rego_eval_with_profile	Evaluate with --profile and return per-rule timing and evaluation counts.
rego_eval_with_coverage	Evaluate with --coverage and return per-line coverage.
rego_test	Run Rego unit tests with opa test. Returns pass, fail, skip and error counts plus per-test records; errored counts tests OPA could not evaluate. With coverage or threshold OPA emits a coverage report instead of per-test records.
rego_bench	Run opa bench and return statistical timing data.
rego_compile_query	Partially evaluate a query against a policy.
opa_exec	Batch-evaluate a decision against multiple input files. Returns per-file results with successCount and errorCount.
rego_test_multiroot	Run opa test once per root and aggregate. Use when opa test . hits package conflicts. Totals include totalErrored.

Featured: rego_eval

// Input
{
  "query": "data.rbac.allow",
  "source": "package rbac\nimport rego.v1\nallow if input.role == \"admin\"",
  "input": { "role": "admin" }
}

// Output
{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "result": [{ "expressions": [{ "value": true, "text": "data.rbac.allow", "location": { "row": 1, "col": 1 } }] }]
  }
}

Category C: Bundle operations

Package, sign, and verify deployable bundles. Wrap opa build, opa sign, and opa build --verification-key.

Tool	What it does
opa_bundle_build	Build a .tar.gz bundle from a policy directory. Supports optimize and revision.
opa_bundle_sign	Sign a bundle directory in place, or an archive beside itself, with a private key. A directory signature stays valid wherever the directory is placed under the same name. Returns the path, algorithm, and file count.
opa_bundle_verify	Verify a signed bundle with a public key through opa build --verification-key. Failures name the reason: wrong key, scope, modified, added, missing or unparseable file, unsigned, or a bundle that does not load.

Category D: OPA server management

Talk to a running OPA server over its REST API. Require OPA_URL to point at a reachable server.

Tool	What it does
opa_list_policies	List the policy IDs registered on the server, with a count. includeSource and includeAst add the Rego text or the parsed AST.
opa_get_policy	Get a single policy by ID. Returns the Rego source; includeAst adds OPA's parsed AST.
opa_put_policy	Upload or replace a policy.
opa_delete_policy	Delete a policy by ID.
opa_get_data	Read a path from the data hierarchy.
opa_put_data	Write to a path in the data hierarchy.
opa_patch_data	Apply a JSON Patch to the data hierarchy.
opa_delete_data	Delete a document from the data hierarchy.
opa_query_decision	POST to a /v1/data/... decision endpoint with input.
opa_compile_query	Partially evaluate a query against the running server.
opa_health	Liveness / readiness check. A server that answers reports healthy: true or healthy: false with OPA's reason; OPA_UNREACHABLE means it could not be reached at all.
opa_status	The same GET /v1/config document as opa_config, under a status key. Bundle and decision-log status (/v1/status) is not exposed. Service header values are redacted.
opa_config	Server configuration from GET /v1/config. OPA drops the credentials block but returns service headers verbatim, so header values are redacted here and the names kept.

Category E: Higher-level helpers

The differentiation surface. These compose lower-level primitives into the tasks agents are actually asked to do.

Tool	What it does
rego_explain_decision	Turn an evaluation trace into a structured per-rule summary of what fired and what did not
rego_generate_test_skeleton	Given a policy, generate a _test.rego skeleton covering each rule.
rego_describe_policy	Summarize a policy's package, imports and per-rule structure from its AST. For the input references a policy reads, use rego_infer_input_schema
rego_suggest_fix	For a failed rego_check or rego_lint, propose minimal patches.
rego_coverage_gaps	Run opa test --coverage and return per-file uncovered line ranges, sorted worst first. Use threshold to focus on files below a target percentage.
rego_security_audit	Run regal lint restricted to security and bugs categories across a directory. Returns severity-grouped findings with remediation guidance.
rego_infer_input_schema	Statically analyse a policy (or directory of policies) with opa parse and return a JSON Schema describing every input.* field the policy reads. No running OPA required. Correct starting point for writing integration tests or configuring opa check --schema.
rego_fix	Run regal fix to auto-apply mechanical fixes: opa-fmt, use-rego-v1, use-assignment-operator, no-whitespace-comment, and directory-package-mismatch. Use dryRun: true to preview changes first. Returns a per-file breakdown of which rules were applied and, for directory-package-mismatch, the new path the file was moved to.
rego_format_write	Run opa fmt --write to canonically format one or more Rego files or directories in place. Use dryRun: true to list which files would change without modifying them. Validates all files parse successfully before writing any. Supports regoV1, v0Compatible, and v1Compatible flags. Only requires opa.
rego_policy_diff	Evaluate the same query against two policies in parallel and compare the results. Returns equal: true/false, the raw value from each side (resultA/resultB), and changedPaths -- dot/bracket JSON paths that differ. Each side takes inline source or a file/directory path. Useful for verifying refactor equivalence or mapping divergence between two policy versions.
rego_verify	Formally verify a property about a Rego rule using SMT solving (Microsoft Z3 via WASM). Unlike testing, this checks ALL possible inputs mathematically and either proves the property holds or returns a concrete counterexample. Supports always_true, never_true, and satisfiable property kinds. Handles equality, comparison, string built-ins (startswith, endswith, contains, regex.match), multi-clause rules, rule defaults, non-boolean head values, and cross-rule inlining. Reports INCONCLUSIVE rather than guessing for negation-as-failure, comprehensions, partial set and object rules, functions, else chains, and complex regex. A body reading an absent field is undefined rather than true, so always_true requires the rule to hold for an empty input too.
rego_explain_undefined	Explain why a Rego query is undefined. Combines a plain eval, a full-trace eval, and per-condition AST analysis to identify the exact body expression blocking each rule. Returns a structured breakdown of which conditions blocked each rule plus a human-readable summary.
rego_playground_share	Publish a policy (and optional input) as a secret GitHub Gist and return the link, for sharing a reproduction. Requires GITHUB_TOKEN with the gist scope; returns GITHUB_TOKEN_MISSING otherwise.

Category F: Conftest (configuration policy testing)

Test Kubernetes manifests, Terraform plans, Dockerfiles, Helm charts, and any YAML/JSON/HCL/TOML/INI against Rego policies using conftest. Requires conftest on PATH or CONFTEST_BINARY set; all four tools return CONFTEST_NOT_FOUND otherwise.

Tool	What it does
conftest_test	Evaluate config files or an inline document against Rego policies with conftest test. Per-file, per-namespace results with arrays always present, and a summary that counts files by name. Parser names are a closed set.
conftest_verify	Run the test_* rules in a conftest policy directory with conftest verify. Reports per-rule results and NO_TESTS_FOUND when there are none.
conftest_pull	Pull a policy bundle from an OCI registry or Git repo into a local directory with conftest pull. The target directory need not exist; conftest creates it, and empties it first, so do not point it at one holding anything else. Omitting policy uses the conftest default, which must itself sit inside an allowed root.
conftest_push	Package a local policy directory as an OCI artifact and push to a registry with conftest push. Registry credentials come from the host environment (docker login, ORAS keychain, etc.) -- credentials are never passed through tools.

Featured: conftest_test with inline config

// Input
{
  "inlineConfig": "apiVersion: v1\nkind: Pod\nspec:\n  containers:\n  - name: app\n    image: nginx:latest",
  "inlinePolicy": "package main\ndeny contains msg if { input.spec.containers[_].image == \"nginx:latest\"; msg := \"pin your image tag\" }"
}

// Output
{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "passed": false,
    "results": [
      {
        "filename": "<inline>",
        "namespace": "main",
        "successes": 0,
        "failures": [{ "msg": "pin your image tag" }],
        "warnings": [],
        "skipped": [],
        "exceptions": []
      }
    ],
    "summary": { "passed": 0, "failed": 1, "warnings": 0, "skipped": 0 }
  }
}

Category G: Meta

Tool	What it does
mcp_server_info	Return server name, version, resolved opa/regal/conftest versions, transport type, and Node.js version in one call. Useful for verifying which server instance the agent is connected to.

Prompts

Three MCP prompts ship with the server. Clients surface them as slash commands or workflow templates.

Prompt	Purpose
policy_authoring_assistant	Walks the agent through writing a new policy: ask about the decision surface, draft, review, format, lint, test.
policy_review_checklist	Review checklist for an existing policy: completeness, edge cases, performance, security pitfalls.
decision_debugging_workflow	Diagnostic flow when a decision is unexpected: gather input, run with explain, isolate the rule, propose a fix.

Resources

Three MCP resources expose curated reference data the agent can read at any time.

Resource URI	What's there
opa://builtins	Categorized OPA built-in function reference, derived at read time from opa capabilities --current. Security-sensitive functions (http.send, crypto.x509.*, opa.runtime) are flagged.
opa://style-guide	Condensed Rego style guide, formatted for LLM consumption.
opa://patterns	Curated common-pattern library: RBAC, ABAC, Kubernetes admission, IaC gates, API authz, rate limiting. Each pattern includes when-to-use, full Rego, a test, and common pitfalls.

Cookbook

A few session shapes that the tool set was designed for.

"Help me write a policy"

You: I need an authz policy: editors can read/write, viewers can only read,
     admins can do anything.

Agent: I'll draft it. (calls rego_format on a draft, then rego_check, then
       rego_lint)

Agent: Here's the policy. I've also generated a test file with cases for
       each role. (calls rego_generate_test_skeleton, then rego_test)

Agent: All 9 tests pass. Want me to save it to <path>?

"Why was this denied?"

You: This API call is being denied and I don't know why.
     [pastes input.json]

Agent: (calls rego_explain_decision against your local policy with that input)

Agent: The deny comes from rule `forbid_anonymous_writes` at line 17.
       Specifically, `input.user` is null and the request method is "POST".
       The rule fires, which causes the default deny. To allow this, you'd
       need either an authenticated user or a policy exception for this
       endpoint.

"Push this policy to staging OPA"

You: Push policies/rbac.rego to the staging OPA server, but first lint and
     test it.

Agent: (rego_lint → 2 style warnings, no errors)
       (rego_test on policies/ → all pass)
       (opa_put_policy with id="rbac" against $OPA_URL)
       (opa_get_policy to verify)

Agent: Done. Policy `rbac` is live on staging at $OPA_URL.

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────── @orygn/opa-mcp ───────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                                       │
│   src/server.ts ──── McpServer (stdio) ─── tool / prompt / resource registries        │
│                          │                                                            │
│                          ├── tools/authoring/         ─┐                              │
│                          ├── tools/evaluation/        ─┤                              │
│                          ├── tools/bundles/           ─┼─── lib/opa-cli.ts ──┐        │
│                          ├── tools/server-management/ ─┤                     │        │
│                          ├── tools/helpers/           ─┤                     │        │
│                          ├── tools/meta/              ─┘                     │        │
│                          │                                                   ▼        │
│                          │                              lib/subprocess.ts ──┴── opa   │
│                          │                              lib/regal-cli.ts   ───── regal│
│                          │                              lib/opa-client.ts  ───── HTTP │
│                          │                                                            │
│                          └── lib/output.ts (envelope + truncation)                    │
│                              lib/security.ts (path allow-list)                        │
│                              lib/errors.ts (structured failures)                      │
│                              lib/logger.ts (file-only, never stdout)                  │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Four things worth knowing if you're going to operate this:

• stdout is the protocol channel. The server logs to a file via lib/logger.ts and never writes to stdout. If you see stray stdout bytes, the client disconnects; the MCP transport layer is strict.
• No tool throws. Every tool catches its own exceptions and returns a structured { ok: false, error: ... } envelope. The agent sees a stable error vocabulary, not a stack trace. Decoding subprocess output happens inside an async callback, where a throw would bypass those handlers entirely, so that path is bounded by bytes rather than left to a try/catch that could not see it.
• Subprocesses are bounded in time, size, and environment. lib/subprocess.ts runs the binaries with shell: false, a hard timeout with SIGTERM-then-SIGKILL escalation, and a per-stream byte cap. There is no path through the server where an agent can construct a shell command. The timeout alone is not enough: opa buffers a result in memory and writes it in one burst at exit, so a command that finishes well inside the timeout can still deliver hundreds of megabytes.
• Children do not inherit the server's environment. lib/child-env.ts builds an explicit allow-list instead. Rego can read its interpreter's environment through opa.runtime().env, so anything passed down is readable by any policy the server evaluates, the proxy variables on the list included.

Security

This server is designed to run locally, started by an MCP client on the user's own machine, communicating over stdio. It is not designed to be exposed on the network.

• File-based tools refuse to read anything outside OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS. When that variable is unset, file tools return PATH_NOT_ALLOWED.
• Subprocesses run with shell: false, a hard timeout, and a byte cap on captured output.
• Evaluated policy cannot read the server's environment. Rego exposes the environment of the opa process through opa.runtime().env, so a child that inherited process.env would hand OPA_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, and every other variable to any policy it evaluated. Since rego_eval accepts inline source, no filesystem access is needed to reach that, which puts it one prompt injection away from any untrusted Rego an agent reads. Children get an explicit allow-list instead (lib/child-env.ts). The list holds no cloud or repository token, but it is not free of credentials: HTTP_PROXY and its siblings are on it, and a proxy URL can embed a username and password. They are there because dropping them breaks everyone behind a corporate proxy. Name them in OPA_MCP_BLOCK_ENV to withhold them anyway. OPA_MCP_PASSTHROUGH_ENV opts individual variables back in.
• OPA_TOKEN is never echoed in tool responses or log entries, and is not passed to any child process.
• Releases are published with npm provenance; the Docker image is built reproducibly from the committed Dockerfile.

To report a vulnerability, follow SECURITY.md. Please do not open a public issue for security problems.

Troubleshooting

Common issues, fast fixes.

OPA_BINARY_NOT_FOUND (or REGAL_NOT_FOUND / CONFTEST_NOT_FOUND) even though the binary is installed. (most common first-day issue, read this first)

MCP clients (notably Claude Desktop on Windows and macOS) launch the server with a deliberately reduced PATH that omits user-local bin directories, even ones that work fine in your interactive shell. The binary is on your machine; the spawned MCP server just can't see it.

Find the absolute path to opa:

# macOS / Linux
which opa
# → /usr/local/bin/opa  (or /opt/homebrew/bin/opa, or ~/.local/bin/opa)

# Windows
Get-Command opa | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Source
# → C:\Users\you\bin\opa.exe  (or wherever)

Then set OPA_BINARY to that absolute path in your client's MCP env block. The same cause and fix apply to the other binaries: if rego_lint / rego_security_audit / rego_fix report REGAL_NOT_FOUND, or the conftest_* tools report CONFTEST_NOT_FOUND, set REGAL_BINARY / CONFTEST_BINARY to the absolute path the same way (find it with which regal / which conftest). Having the binary on your shell PATH is not enough -- the spawned server gets a reduced PATH. The examples/ configs already include these env vars; just edit the placeholder paths.

This issue does not affect the Docker install path, which bundles opa and regal and bypasses PATH entirely. The MCPB bundle resolves opa from OPA_BINARY or PATH, so it can hit this.

The server starts, then the client says "disconnected."

The most likely cause is something in the process writing to stdout besides MCP frames. If you've added a custom tool, check that no library it calls prints to stdout. The fixed-position safety net is lib/logger.ts. Use it, not console.log.

PATH_NOT_ALLOWED on a file under my project.

OPA_MCP_ALLOWED_PATHS is empty by default. Set it to the absolute path(s) you want the server to read from, comma-separated.

OPA_UNREACHABLE when calling opa_* tools.

OPA_URL (default http://localhost:8181) must point at a running OPA server (opa run --server ...). Check with curl $OPA_URL/health.

directory-package-mismatch violation when linting inline source.

Since v0.1.1, the server auto-disables this rule for inline-source calls. If you see it, you are running an older version -- upgrade to v0.1.1 or later. To get canonical signal on this rule, lint via paths against the real on-disk file instead of passing source directly.

Where are the logs?

Default location is <OS-tmpdir>/orygn-opa-mcp.log. That's typically /tmp/orygn-opa-mcp.log on Linux/macOS or %TEMP%\orygn-opa-mcp.log on Windows. Set OPA_MCP_LOG_FILE to override, and OPA_MCP_LOG_LEVEL=debug to widen the firehose.

Development

git clone https://github.com/OrygnsCode/opa-mcp-server.git
cd opa-mcp-server
npm install
npm run dev

Common commands:

npm run lint              # ESLint
npm run typecheck         # tsc --noEmit
npm test                  # unit tests (Vitest)
npm run test:coverage     # unit + coverage report
npm run test:integration  # against real opa + regal binaries
npm run build             # compile to dist/

CI runs lint, typecheck, build, and unit tests on every push and PR across Ubuntu and Windows on Node 20, 22 and 24, plus macOS on Node 22. Integration tests run on Linux against pinned opa and regal releases.

For the full contributor workflow (adding tools, naming conventions, logging discipline, release process), see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Versioning & support

This project follows Semantic Versioning. The public surface for SemVer purposes is the set of registered tools, prompts, and resources, their input/output schemas, the recognized environment variables, and the CLI entry point.

Breaking changes will be:

• announced in CHANGELOG.md under a new major version,
• preceded by at least one minor release with a deprecation warning,
• accompanied by a migration note in the release announcement.

Pinned versions of the upstream toolchain (opa and regal) are treated as part of the build, not as a dependency the operator manages. The Dockerfile and CI use the same pin; bumps go through Dependabot or a manual PR.

License

MIT © Orygn LLC

@orygn/opa-mcp is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Open Policy Agent project, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Styra, or Anthropic. "Open Policy Agent" and "Rego" are trademarks of their respective owners. "Model Context Protocol" is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC.

Listed in the OPA Ecosystem.