Patchloom

MIT OR Apache-2.0

file-editingastdeveloper-toolsclicode-editing

Summary

Structured, format-preserving file editor for agents: JSON/YAML/TOML, markdown, and AST-aware code edits, transactional across files.

Features

Parser-backed JSON/YAML/TOML edits that preserve comments and formatting
AST-aware rename/replace/list-symbols across ~20 languages
Markdown table, bullet, and section editing
Multi-file batch/transaction edits with rollback

Installation

Set up this MCP server in your favorite AI agent — copy a ready-made configuration below.

Any MCP-compatible agent

Most agents (Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, and more) read a standard mcpServers configuration.

Open your agent's MCP configuration file.
Merge the snippet below into it.
Restart the agent — the "Patchloom" tools will be available.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "patchloom": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "patchloom",
        "mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

Add the server with a single CLI command.

claude mcp add patchloom -- npx -y patchloom mcp-server

Claude Desktop

Add the server to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "patchloom": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "patchloom",
        "mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Description

Patchloom targets a specific pain point for coding agents: naive text replacement on structured files, whether config, markdown, or source code, is error-prone and burns tool-call round-trips. Instead of shell-quoted sed or patch commands, it gives agents typed, structured operations: doc commands that edit JSON/YAML/TOML while preserving comments and formatting, md commands for editing markdown tables, bullet lists, and sections without rewriting the whole file, ast commands for AST-aware rename, replace, and list-symbols across roughly twenty programming languages, plus generic search/replace/patch/create/delete/read and a tidy command for whitespace normalization.

A batch and transaction mode lets multiple edits across multiple files execute as one transaction with rollback if any step fails, which is the kind of atomicity agents need when refactoring across a codebase. It ships as both a CLI and an MCP server, so an agent can call these operations as structured JSON tool calls rather than generating shell commands the host has to parse and quote correctly. Distribution is unusually broad for a young project, spanning npm, Homebrew, Scoop, Chocolatey, crates.io, an official MCP Registry listing, and VS Code and Open VSX extensions, backed by well over a thousand commits and thousands of tests. This is aimed at coding-agent builders and power users of Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code who want safer, cheaper structured edits than raw find and replace.