avalonia-devtools-mcp

A set of tools for inspecting and interacting with a running Avalonia application. Avalonia is a framework for building desktop user interfaces.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to attach to an app, inspect controls, search the interface, check styles and properties, take screenshots, and test interactions.
Why use it?
It helps diagnose runtime interface problems by showing the visual tree, applied properties, styles, screenshots, and simulated input.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/devolutions/avalonia-extensions/avalonia-devtools-mcp
Any agent
npx skills add Devolutions/avalonia-extensions --skill avalonia-devtools-mcp
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Devolutions/avalonia-extensions

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 44 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 665 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00044 $0.00665
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00332
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00133
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00067

Measured 3d ago against content hash 13d4341a63d0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

avalonia-devtools-mcp scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/skills/avalonia-devtools-mcp/SKILL.md · 64 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 64 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Avalonia DevTools MCP

Use this skill when the task involves validating or debugging runtime UI behavior in a running Avalonia app, especially when visual inspection, tree traversal, property/style inspection, or screenshots are needed.

When to use

  • "Show me the visual tree"
  • "Find this control in the running app"
  • "What styles/properties are applied at runtime?"
  • "Take a screenshot of this panel/window"
  • "Simulate click/text input and verify result"

Preconditions

  1. DevTools MCP server configured in user MCP config (for VS Code in this environment):
    • ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/mcp.json
  2. Tool installed:
    • dotnet tool install --global AvaloniaUI.DeveloperTools
  3. App instrumentation in target app:
    • AvaloniaUI.DiagnosticsSupport package
    • .WithDeveloperTools() or this.AttachDeveloperTools() at startup
    • Keep this instrumentation development-only (Debug), since MCP enables live inspection, mutation, and input simulation.

Standard workflow

  1. attach-to-app with no id
  2. If multiple/any clients returned, select one and call attach-to-app with that id
  3. Inspect with:
    • tree (roots/subtree)
    • search (type/x:Name)
    • props, styles, resources
    • screenshot
  4. Interact with:
    • input, action, set-prop, pseudo-class
  5. detach when done

Important pitfalls

  • Do not tell users to press F12 for MCP connectivity. F12 opens standalone tools and does not establish MCP attach by itself.
  • attach-to-app commonly returns an app list first; a second call with selected id is expected.
  • Node IDs are ephemeral; reacquire via tree/search after UI changes.

License/auth caveat observed in this repo

In this environment, forcing AVALONIA_TOOLS_LICENSE_KEY through MCP server env could produce:

Authenticated session does not have access to required product: avalonia-developer-tools-console

Working behavior was restored by removing explicit MCP env override and relying on an already-authenticated DevTools session.

Read the full file on GitHub · 64 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 64 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A 13d4341a63d0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

avalonia-devtools-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository Devolutions/avalonia-extensions (79 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 44 tokens to every session and 665 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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