Using vmware-monitor with Goose

July 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

Goose is an open-source AI agent by Block that runs locally on your machine. This guide shows how to add vmware-monitor as an MCP extension for safe, read-only VMware monitoring.

Code-level safety: vmware-monitor is an independent repository with zero destructive code paths — no power off, delete, create, or reconfigure functions exist in the codebase.

Prerequisites

Install vmware-monitor
```
uv tool install vmware-monitor
```

Configure credentials

mkdir -p ~/.vmware-monitor
cat > ~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml << 'EOF'
targets:
  my-vcenter:
    host: vcenter.example.com
    username: readonly-user@vsphere.local
    password_env: VMWARE_MONITOR_PASSWORD
    verify_ssl: false
EOF

echo "VMWARE_MONITOR_PASSWORD=your_password" > ~/.vmware-monitor/.env
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-monitor/.env

Verify setup
```
vmware-monitor doctor
```

Adding to Goose

Option A: goose configure (Interactive)

goose configure
# Select: Add Extension → MCP Server
# Name: vmware-monitor
# Command: vmware-monitor mcp     # v1.5.15+; legacy: uvx --from vmware-monitor vmware-monitor-mcp
# Env: VMWARE_MONITOR_CONFIG=~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml

Option B: config.yaml (Manual)

Add to ~/.config/goose/config.yaml:

extensions:
  vmware-monitor:
    type: stdio
    cmd: vmware-monitor
    args:
      - mcp
    env:
      VMWARE_MONITOR_CONFIG: ~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml
    enabled: true
    description: VMware vCenter/ESXi read-only monitoring (code-level safe)

A ready-to-use template is available at examples/mcp-configs/goose.json.

Available MCP Tools (27 read-only tools)

Tool	Description
`list_virtual_machines`	List VMs with power state, CPU, RAM, IP. Supports `limit`, `sort_by`, `power_state`, `fields`
`list_esxi_hosts`	List hosts with CPU cores, memory, ESXi version, uptime
`list_all_datastores`	List datastores with capacity, free space, type
`list_all_clusters`	List clusters with host count, DRS/HA status
`get_alarms`	Get active alarms with severity and description
`get_events`	Get recent vCenter/ESXi events
`vm_info`	Get detailed VM info including snapshot list

The table above is the most-used subset. The server exposes 27 read-only tools in total — performance, host health, platform state, and the investigation bundles are listed in skills/vmware-monitor/references/capabilities.md.

All tools accept an optional target parameter to switch between environments, except cross_vcenter_attention, which sweeps every configured target by design.

Usage Examples

Example 1: Infrastructure health overview

You: Show all active alarms grouped by severity

Goose: [calls get_alarms]
CRITICAL (1):
  - vm-db-primary: Disk I/O latency > 50ms

WARNING (3):
  - esxi-host02: CPU ready time high
  - datastore-ssd: 81% capacity used
  - vm-web03: Memory balloon active

INFO (2): ...

Example 2: VM inventory snapshot

You: List all powered-on VMs sorted by memory usage

Goose: [calls list_virtual_machines with power_state=on, sort_by=memory]
vm-db-primary    32GB / 31.8GB used  (99%) ← high
vm-analytics01   16GB / 14.2GB used  (89%)
vm-api-gw        8GB  / 6.1GB used   (76%)
...

Example 3: Investigate a specific VM

You: Tell me everything about vm-web01 including its snapshots

Goose: [calls vm_info]
vm-web01:
  Power: ON | 4 vCPU | 8GB RAM (6.2GB used)
  Guest OS: Ubuntu 22.04 | IP: 10.0.1.22
  Datastore: ssd-ds01 | Uptime: 18 days
  Snapshots (2):
    - pre-patch-2026-02-20 (21 days old, 4.2GB)
    - before-nginx-upgrade (8 days old, 1.1GB)

Local Model Support (Ollama)

vmware-monitor works with local models via Goose + Ollama:

# ~/.config/goose/config.yaml
provider: ollama
model: qwen2.5:32b

extensions:
  vmware-monitor:
    type: stdio
    cmd: vmware-monitor
    args: [mcp]
    env:
      VMWARE_MONITOR_CONFIG: ~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml

See examples/ollama-local-setup.md for full local model setup.