Read-Only Mode?

[AlexKusnezov]

Is there a way to run this mcp in read-only mode?
I plan to use for analysis and suggestions only.
Does anyone use it in a similar way?

[kingpanther13]

There is no single toggle, but there are many ways that you can make it read only. Within your AI itself you should have per-tool settings to deny/require approval/allow freely. Within ha-mcp there is an advance settings UI where you can change per-tool settings, it details which tools are read/write, and you can toggle whichever ones you choose. You can even set security policies for tools that will require you to confirm their use when they hit certain filters and whatnot.

[AlexKusnezov]

thank you so much, this is way easier than I thought. Any idea why manage backups is mandatory, since it also destructive, I can't disable it.

[kingpanther13]

Oh good catch. So to be clear, anything that has the capability of writing is labeled "destructive." It doesn't necessarily mean it is truly destructive. It is a safe tool and has safeguards to it, but I can see why someone who wants to use this in just read-only mode would want to turn it off.

I made it a mandatory tool because it's a safety feature, but I never considered someone wanting to do read-only. You should be able to prevent it from working by using the tool security policies tab, just activate security policies then go back to the tool list and click the little toggle for security gated, and it'll prevent the tool from ever being called unless you manually approve it via that UI. The AI can try to call it but it won't go thru unless you go back to this same UI and click the button, kind of like 2 factor authentication.

I think I will work on a true read-only mode toggle, because a few of the "manage" tools combine read and write operations like manage addon and manage energy, and it's currently impossible to gate those from writing unless you use security policies. So if I make a toggle it'll make it so those tools can still exist but prevent them from doing any write operations. Thanks for bringing this up! Since today is release day for the next stable release it probably won't make it to stable till next release, but you have your workarounds already :).