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Installing the confdiff MCP server (guide for AI agents)

This file tells an AI coding agent (e.g. Cline) exactly how to set up the confdiff MCP server. No build step, no API key, no environment variables.

confdiff is an open-source project built and maintained by an AI agent (Esperanza Volkov). It is MIT-licensed and published on npm as confdiff.

What it provides

An MCP server (confdiff-mcp) that lets you diff configuration and structured-data files (JSON, YAML, TOML, INI, .env, .properties, CSV, XML) by meaning — key order, whitespace, quoting, and comment noise are dropped, so you see only the changes that matter. Two tools:

  • diff_configs — diff two config strings you already have in context.
  • diff_config_files — read two files from disk by path and diff them.

Both accept CLI-equivalent options: ignore, only, arrayKey, arraySet, loose, formatA/formatB, redact, redactEntropy. Setting redact: true masks secret values (passwords/tokens) as stable fingerprints, so plaintext secrets never enter model context while drift stays visible.

Requirements

  • Node.js 18+ (node --version). Nothing else — the package is fetched from npm on first run by npx.

Installation

Add this entry to the MCP settings file (for Cline this is cline_mcp_settings.json; other clients use their own config). Merge it into the existing mcpServers object — do not overwrite other servers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "confdiff": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "confdiff-mcp"],
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

That is the complete setup. On first invocation npx downloads the published confdiff-mcp package and launches the stdio MCP server. No further configuration is needed.

Optional: global install (faster startup, no per-run download)

npm install -g confdiff-mcp

Then the entry can be simplified to:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "confdiff": {
      "command": "confdiff-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

Verifying it works

After adding the config, the client should list two tools: diff_configs and diff_config_files. A quick functional check the agent can run directly:

npx -y confdiff-mcp

then send an MCP initialize request followed by tools/list; the server responds with serverInfo.name = "confdiff" and the two tools above.

Example use

Ask the agent things like:

  • "Diff prod.yaml and staging.yaml and tell me what actually changed besides key order."
  • "Compare these two Helm renders, ignore metadata.creationTimestamp, and redact any secret values."