etc.¶

vstack ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes all 34 diagnostic patterns as MCP tools, plus per-pattern citations + playbooks + composition manifests as resources, plus invocation templates as prompts.

Local stdio subprocess. Zero hosting cost on the vstack side. Compatible with any MCP-aware client.

Install + configure¶

pip install 'valanistack[anthropic,mcp]'

Claude Desktop — paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vstack": {
      "command": "vstack-mcp",
      "args": ["serve"],
      "env": {"ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": "sk-ant-..."}
    }
  }
}

Cursor — same JSON into ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or project-level .cursor/mcp.json).

Cline / Continue / Roo / Windsurf / Zed — open the MCP-servers config in the extension settings and paste the same block.

Or auto-generate the snippet for any platform:

vstack-mcp config-snippet claude-desktop
vstack-config gen-platform cursor       # extends to 14 platforms

What it exposes¶

34 tools — one per pattern, named vstack_<pattern_name> (e.g. vstack_lewin, vstack_aar, vstack_schein_culture).
102 resources — vstack://patterns/index (catalogue), vstack://patterns/<name>/citations, vstack://patterns/<name>/playbooks, vstack://patterns/<name>/composition.
35 prompts — meta vstack_pick_pattern router + one vstack_<name>_invoke template per pattern.

Usage¶

Once configured, ask your client to run any of the 34 patterns by name — "Use the Schein culture audit on this trace…" — and the client picks the matching tool from the catalogue, the server runs the analyzer, and the detection comes back as structured JSON. The server runs as a local stdio subprocess; nothing leaves your machine except whatever LLM calls the analyzer itself makes.

Utility CLI subcommands¶

vstack-mcp serve              # the daemon (your MCP client launches this)
vstack-mcp list-tools         # all 34 tool names + friendly labels
vstack-mcp list-resources     # all 102 resource URIs
vstack-mcp config-snippet <client>  # generate the config JSON for a client