You can manage and serve dynamic prompt templates with the MCP Prompt Engine. It lets you create reusable, logic-driven prompts using Go templates, expose them as MCP prompt arguments, and serve them to compatible MCP clients with hot-reload and a rich CLI for development and testing.

How to use

Run the server locally or in a container to serve your prompt templates to MCP clients. Create prompts in a dedicated directory, validate them, and then start the server so clients can fetch and render prompts with dynamic input.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before starting:

• Go is required to install the MCP Prompt Engine as a binary.

• Docker is optional if you plan to run the containerized server.

# Install the MCP Prompt Engine binary
go install github.com/vasayxtx/mcp-prompt-engine@latest

# Create a prompts directory and add templates (see Usage for template structure)
mkdir -p prompts
# Add your .tmpl files here

Run the server locally

Start the server so your prompt templates are available to MCP clients. By default, the server looks for templates in the ./prompts directory.

mcp-prompt-engine serve

To customize the prompts directory or enable quiet mode, pass explicit flags as shown in the following variations.

## Run the server with Docker

If you prefer containerized deployment, run the pre-built Docker image. Mount your local prompts and logs into the container for persistence.

Pull and run the pre-built image from GHCR

docker run -i --rm
-v /path/to/your/prompts:/app/prompts:ro
-v /path/to/your/logs:/app/logs
ghcr.io/vasayxtx/mcp-prompt-engine

## Validate and test prompts

Validate prompts to catch syntax errors before starting the server. Use the CLI to list, render, and validate templates during development.

Validate a specific prompt

mcp-prompt-engine validate git_stage_commit

List prompts with details

mcp-prompt-engine list --verbose

Render a prompt with arguments (example)

mcp-prompt-engine render git_stage_commit --arg type=feat

## Connecting to clients

Your MCP client will discover and render prompts exposed by this server. Ensure the client is configured to connect to your MCP server entry, which can be the local binary or the Docker container endpoint, depending on how you deployed.

## Notes and tips

- The server automatically parses JSON arguments when possible, enabling complex data types for template inputs. You can enable or disable JSON parsing with a flag if needed.

- Partial templates prefixed with an underscore can be included in other templates to promote reuse.

- The Go text/template engine powers all templating features, including variables, conditionals, loops, and partials.

- For development, hot-reload detects changes to prompts and reloads without restarting the server.

## Troubleshooting

If prompts are not appearing in clients, ensure the server is running, the correct prompts directory is mounted, and there are no syntax errors in the templates.

## Available tools

### validate

Checks all templates for syntax errors and reports any issues.

### list

Lists available prompts and their descriptions; with --verbose shows detailed info and variables.

### render

Renders a template directly in the terminal using provided arguments and environment fallbacks.

### serve

Starts the MCP server to expose prompts to MCP clients.