Using vmware-aiops with LocalCowork

March 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

LocalCowork is an AI collaboration platform by Liquid AI that runs locally. This guide shows how to add vmware-aiops as an MCP server so LocalCowork can manage your VMware infrastructure.

Prerequisites

Install vmware-aiops
```
uv tool install vmware-aiops
```

Configure credentials

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

echo "VMWARE_PASSWORD=your_password" > ~/.vmware-aiops/.env
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-aiops/.env

Verify setup
```
vmware-aiops doctor
```

Adding to LocalCowork

Edit the LocalCowork MCP config JSON (typically ~/.localcowork/mcp_config.json or set via the UI):

{
  "vmware-aiops": {
    "command": "python",
    "args": ["-m", "mcp_server"],
    "cwd": "/path/to/VMware-AIops",
    "env": {
      "VMWARE_AIOPS_CONFIG": "~/.vmware-aiops/config.yaml"
    }
  }
}

Replace /path/to/VMware-AIops with your actual clone path.

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

Available MCP Tools (31 tools)

Category	Tools
Inventory	`list_virtual_machines`, `list_esxi_hosts`, `list_all_datastores`, `list_all_clusters`
Health	`get_alarms`, `get_events`, `vm_info`
VM Lifecycle	`vm_power_on`, `vm_power_off`, `vm_set_ttl`, `vm_cancel_ttl`, `vm_list_ttl`, `vm_clean_slate`
Deployment	`deploy_vm_from_ova`, `deploy_vm_from_template`, `deploy_linked_clone`, `attach_iso_to_vm`, `convert_vm_to_template`, `batch_clone_vms`, `batch_linked_clone_vms`, `batch_deploy_from_spec`
Guest Operations	`vm_guest_exec`, `vm_guest_upload`, `vm_guest_download`
Plan → Apply	`vm_create_plan`, `vm_apply_plan`, `vm_rollback_plan`, `vm_list_plans`
Datastore	`browse_datastore`, `scan_datastore_images`, `list_cached_images`

All tools accept an optional target parameter to switch between environments.

Usage Examples

Example 1: Inventory overview

You: List all VMs that are powered off

LocalCowork: [calls list_virtual_machines with power_state=off]
Found 4 powered-off VMs:
- vm-backup01 (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM)
- vm-test02 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM)
- vm-old-db (8 vCPU, 32GB RAM)
- vm-staging (4 vCPU, 16GB RAM)

Example 2: Safe multi-step deployment

You: Deploy a new VM from template "ubuntu-22.04-base" with 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM

LocalCowork: [calls vm_create_plan]
Plan ready:
  - Source: ubuntu-22.04-base
  - Resources: 4 vCPU / 8GB RAM
  - Target datastore: datastore01 (free: 1.2TB)

Confirm to apply? (yes/no)
You: yes
[calls vm_apply_plan] ✓ VM deployed in 45s

Example 3: Guest execution

You: Check nginx status on vm-web01

LocalCowork: [calls vm_guest_exec]
● nginx.service - A high performance web server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2026-03-10 08:12:33 UTC; 23h ago