backburner-mcp

Put your AI agent's slow work on the back burner. Keep cooking.

Background tasks for AI agents that outlive the conversation — start a long job, close the client, and the result is still waiting when you come back.

Durable & Restart-Proof  ◦  Zero Infrastructure  ◦  MCP Tasks (2026-07-28)  ◦  Windows & Unix

📦 PyPI  •  🗂️ MCP Registry  •  🐛 Issues  •  📄 MIT

📢 Updates

• v1.0 — implements the official MCP Tasks extension (SEP-2663, io.modelcontextprotocol/tasks). A Tasks-capable client can turn a start_task call into a durable task and drive it with tasks/get, tasks/update, and tasks/cancel — the standard async-job protocol — while the five plain tools keep working for every other client. Built against the 2026-07-28 spec (mcp 2.0).
• v0.2.1 — output with non-ASCII characters (✓, emoji, any non-English text) no longer crashes tasks on Windows.
• v0.2.0 — exit_code is no longer reported for cancelled/timed-out tasks (it was an artifact of the kill, not a real result); new animated demo below.
• v0.1.x — first release: 5 tools, task timeouts, command allow/deny policy. Listed on the official MCP Registry as io.github.RohitYajee8076/backburner.

backburner is an MCP server that gives any AI assistant — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and any other MCP client — the ability to run long shell commands as background tasks — start a test suite, a build, a scrape, a batch job — then keep working and check back for the results, instead of sitting frozen until it finishes.

🔥 Why not just use my client's built-in background mode?

Because that lives inside the conversation — it disappears the moment the session ends. Close the chat, restart the client, reboot the laptop, and any in-session background work (and its output) is gone.

backburner keeps every task and its full output on disk (SQLite + per-task log files under ~/.backburner/), so your work outlives the session that started it:

• Start now, collect later — even in a different chat. A task you launch today is still listed, with its result, in a brand-new session tomorrow.
• Restart-proof. State survives the server, the client, and the machine restarting. Finished tasks keep their output; a task cut off by a crash is honestly marked interrupted, never silently dropped.
• No waiting, no blocking. A 10-minute tool call no longer freezes the conversation or times out and loses the work.

See it for yourself — a real two-process proof (no mock-ups):

python docs/demo_restart.py

It starts a job in one process, exits, then a separate process — which never saw the task id — finds the finished work waiting on disk.

Built on the MCP Tasks pattern, formalized in the 2026-07-28 spec release (SEP-2663): backburner speaks it natively (tasks/get / tasks/update / tasks/cancel) and exposes the same engine as plain tools, so it works with every client today.

🧰 Tools

Tool	What it does
start_task(command, cwd?, timeout_seconds?)	Run a shell command in the background, returns a task id immediately
task_status(task_id)	working / completed / failed / cancelled / timed_out / interrupted
task_result(task_id, tail_lines?)	Captured output — works mid-run too, so you can peek at progress
cancel_task(task_id)	Kill the task and its whole process tree
list_tasks(limit?)	Recent tasks, newest first

✨ Features

• Survives restarts — tasks are tracked in SQLite under ~/.backburner/; output is captured to per-task log files. If the server dies mid-task, orphaned tasks are honestly marked interrupted, never silently lost.

• Real cancellation — kills the full process tree (worker processes included), on Windows and Unix.

• Peek at live progress — task_result on a running task returns the output so far.

• Timeouts — pass timeout_seconds and a runaway task is killed and honestly marked timed_out instead of hanging forever.

• Command policy — restrict what the AI may run with environment variables (regexes, comma-separated; deny always wins):

  BACKBURNER_ALLOW="^pytest,^npm (test|run build)"   # only these may run
  BACKBURNER_DENY="rm -rf,shutdown,format"           # these never run
  

• Zero infrastructure — stdlib only (SQLite, subprocess, threads). No Redis, no Celery, no Docker.

• Tested — a pytest suite covers the full job lifecycle: completion, failure, cancellation, timeouts, crash recovery, and the command policy.

🚀 Install

backburner is a standard stdio MCP server — it works with any MCP-compatible client, including:

Claude Code · Claude Desktop · OpenAI (ChatGPT desktop / Agents SDK) · Google Gemini (Gemini CLI) · GitHub Copilot (VS Code) · Cursor · Windsurf · Cline · Zed — and any other client that speaks MCP.

First install the package:

pip install backburner-mcp

Claude Code

claude mcp add backburner -- python -m backburner.server

Everything else (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code / Copilot, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, …)

Most clients use the same standard config block — add backburner to your client's MCP config (see your client's docs for where that file lives):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "backburner": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "backburner.server"]
    }
  }
}

🔒 Security note

backburner executes the shell commands the AI sends it, with your user's permissions. That is its job — but treat it like giving your agent a terminal. Run it only with clients whose tool-use you review/approve, prefer permission modes that require confirmation for start_task, and use BACKBURNER_ALLOW / BACKBURNER_DENY to scope what may run.

🗺️ Roadmap

• Task timeouts and max-runtime limits
• Allowlist/denylist for commands
• PyPI release — pip install backburner-mcp
• Listed on the official MCP Registry
• MCP Tasks extension (spec 2026-07-28, SEP-2663) — native tasks/get / tasks/update / tasks/cancel alongside the plain tools
• Task push updates (notifications/tasks) — live status without polling
• Local web dashboard — watch tasks live in the browser
• Structured progress reporting (parse % / step markers from output)

📄 License

MIT