Installation¶

Requirements¶

Claude Code (or any MCP client)
A Windows host with TwinCAT 3.1 Build 4026 and TcXaeShell

Reading projects, generating docs, and searching infosys work without TwinCAT installed. Writes, builds, and hardware authoring need TcXaeShell open with the solution loaded; runtime tools (deploy, tests, symbols, diagnostics) need an ADS route to the target.

Plugin (recommended)¶

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add georgeturneruk/tckit
/plugin install tckit@tckit
> Set me up for TcKit.

The bundled skills walk you through setup. No .NET SDK is required: if the SDK is present the plugin builds the server from source, otherwise it downloads a self-contained server (~74 MB, cached per version) from the releases page.

Prebuilt binary¶

For MCP clients other than the plugin, or for offline and locked-down machines, download tckit-server-win-x64.exe from the releases page. It is a self-contained Windows x64 build with no .NET runtime or SDK dependency.

claude mcp add tckit -- <path>\tckit-server-win-x64.exe

To point the plugin launcher at a pre-placed copy instead of letting it download, set the TCKIT_SERVER_EXE environment variable to the exe's full path.

From source¶

With the .NET 8 SDK:

dotnet build dotnet/TcKit.sln -c Release
claude mcp add tckit -- <clone>\dotnet\src\TcKit.Server\bin\Release\net8.0-windows\TcKit.Server.exe

The server speaks MCP over stdio; any MCP client can register the built exe the same way.

Verify¶

Ask your MCP client to call Ping, then GetStructure against a TwinCAT project path.

Next¶

Set the safety stance before pointing TcKit at a live PLC.