mcp-wireshark

Community-maintained MCP server for Wireshark / tshark. Not affiliated with Wireshark or Anthropic. Give your AI assistant direct access to packet captures. Ask Claude to summarize a .pcap, follow a TCP stream, filter for a specific protocol, or capture live traffic — all without leaving the chat.

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Quick start with Claude Code

pip install mcp-wireshark
claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user mcp-wireshark -- mcp-wireshark

That's it. Open Claude Code and try:

"Summarize ./capture.pcap and tell me which IPs talked the most."

--scope user makes the server available across every Claude Code project. Drop the flag to install it for the current project only. See claude mcp docs for more.

Verify the install

claude mcp list

You should see mcp-wireshark listed. Inside Claude Code, ask:

"Run check_installation."

If tshark is on your PATH, it returns the version. If not, see troubleshooting.

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Tools

The server exposes 13 tools, split cleanly between read tools (safe, no side effects) and write tools (capture traffic or write files). Both groups are annotated with the standard MCP readOnlyHint so any compliant client can surface the distinction.

Read tools

Safe to call freely — they only inspect state.

Tool	What it does
check_installation	Verify tshark is installed and show version
list_interfaces	List network interfaces available to capture from
read_pcap	Read packets from a .pcap / .pcapng file (preview + total count)
display_filter	Apply a Wireshark display filter to a pcap
summarize_pcap	High-level summary: I/O stats, protocol hierarchy, top talkers
stats_by_proto	Protocol hierarchy statistics
follow_tcp	Reassemble a TCP stream and return its payload
follow_udp	Reassemble a UDP stream and return its payload
expert_info	tshark expert analysis: warnings, errors, and notes grouped by severity
decode_protocol	Extract protocol fields as a TSV table. Curated defaults for HTTP, DNS, TLS, GOOSE, MMS, SV, SIP, ICMP; arbitrary fields for any other protocol
protocol_stats	Aggregate -z reports (protocol hierarchy, conversations, endpoints, HTTP/DNS/SMB stats)

Write tools

These create files or capture live traffic. Compliant clients may prompt before invoking.

Tool	What it does
live_capture	Capture live traffic from an interface (capped at 5 minutes / 10k packets)
export_json	Export packets from a pcap to a JSON file at a path you choose

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See it in action

These clips run the real tools against demo/demo.pcapng — a short home-network capture. Regenerate them with python demo/render_gif.py <scene>.

summarize_pcap — characterize an unknown capture at a glance

decode_protocol — filter to a protocol and get a compact table (here: TLS SNI and DNS-over-HTTPS lookups)

expert_info — let tshark surface the warnings and anomalies for you

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Example prompts

Drop these into Claude Code as-is:

List my network interfaces.
Summarize ./traffic.pcap.
From ./traffic.pcap, show me only HTTP requests.
Follow TCP stream 0 in ./traffic.pcap and tell me what protocol is in it.
Capture 30 seconds of traffic on Wi-Fi filtered to tcp.port == 443.
Export every DNS packet from ./traffic.pcap to ./dns.json.
Decode the GOOSE messages in ./substation.pcapng — only stNum >= 1.
Run expert analysis on ./traffic.pcap and group findings by severity.
Show me the IP conversations in ./traffic.pcap.

Useful display filters

Filter	Matches
tcp.port == 80	HTTP
tcp.port == 443	HTTPS
dns	All DNS
http.request	HTTP requests only
ip.addr == 10.0.0.1	Traffic to/from a specific host
tcp.flags.syn == 1 && tcp.flags.ack == 0	TCP SYN packets only

For substation engineers analyzing IEC 61850 traffic:

Filter	Matches
goose	All GOOSE messages
goose.stNum > 0	GOOSE messages with state changes
mms	All MMS traffic
sv	Sampled Values

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Other clients

Anything that speaks MCP works. The package installs an mcp-wireshark binary on PATH.

<details> <summary><b>Claude Desktop</b></summary>

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "wireshark": {
            "command": "mcp-wireshark"
        }
    }
}

</details>

<details> <summary><b>VS Code (Copilot / GitHub Copilot Chat)</b></summary>

Create .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace:

{
    "servers": {
        "wireshark": {
            "command": "mcp-wireshark"
        }
    }
}

</details>

<details> <summary><b>Cursor / Windsurf / others</b></summary>

Use the same stdio invocation: command: mcp-wireshark. No transport flags.

</details>

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• Wireshark installed; tshark reachable on PATH

Install with pip or uv:

pip install mcp-wireshark
# or
uvx mcp-wireshark

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Troubleshooting

<details> <summary><b>tshark not found on Windows</b></summary>

Add Wireshark to your system PATH:

1. Press Win+R → run sysdm.cpl → Advanced → Environment Variables
2. Edit Path → add C:\Program Files\Wireshark
3. Restart your terminal and Claude Code, then re-run check_installation

(Avoid passing PATH through claude mcp add --env — values are taken literally, no %PATH% expansion.)

</details>

<details> <summary><b>Permission denied capturing on Linux</b></summary>

Add yourself to the wireshark group, then log out and back in:

sudo usermod -aG wireshark $USER

</details>

<details> <summary><b>"No packets captured" from live_capture</b></summary>

• Confirm the interface name from list_interfaces (Wireshark uses different names than ifconfig/ip)
• On macOS, you may need to install ChmodBPF (ships with the Wireshark .dmg)
• Check that no display filter is excluding everything </details>

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Development

git clone https://github.com/khuynh22/mcp-wireshark.git
cd mcp-wireshark
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate  # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

pytest                   # tests
black src tests          # format
ruff check src tests     # lint
mypy src                 # type check

The codebase is organized so new tools land in one of two clearly-scoped files:

• src/mcp_wireshark/read_tools.py — anything that just inspects state
• src/mcp_wireshark/write_tools.py — anything that captures traffic or writes files

server.py only contains routing. See CLAUDE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

Every file path is validated (.. rejected, extension allow-listed). Every display filter is checked for shell metacharacters. tshark is always invoked via asyncio.create_subprocess_exec, never shell=True. Hard caps: 10k packets per call, 5 min per live capture. See SECURITY.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.