EmbeddedCI BenchPod

Name: EmbeddedCI BenchPod
Author: embeddedci-com

@embeddedci-comMCP server · External

Drive a BenchPod hardware-in-the-loop bench: power, flash, UART, I2C, CAN, analog and logic.

Hardware & electronicsv2.10.0Apache-2.0Python

Freeno charge per call

How to install

Runs on your machine from its package; the steps are below.

What it does

Reads
Writes
High impact

At most: moves money, runs code or commands, deletes data, or sends messages for you.

What it costs

Free

Odel charges nothing per call. The publisher may charge for its own service.

Runs locally over stdio

This server isn't hosted — your MCP client launches it from a package registry. Use one of the commands below, or drop the config into your client (e.g. Claude Desktop).

PyPIembeddedci-mcpv2.10.0

Run

uvx embeddedci-mcp

MCP client config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "embeddedci-benchpod": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "embeddedci-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

README2 min readView on GitHub

embeddedci-python

Python packages for driving an EmbeddedCI BenchPod — a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tester that powers a target board, flashes it over SWD, talks to its UART, I2C and CAN, and drives and measures its analog and logic signals — from pytest, from an AI agent, or from OpenHTF.

Packages

Package	Path	What it is
`embeddedci`	`packages/embeddedci/`	The BenchPod SDK and pytest plugin: `from embeddedci.benchpod import BenchPod`. Connects over the network, USB or the cloud (`embeddedci:<device-name>`, with an API key or GitHub Actions OIDC).
`embeddedci-mcp`	`packages/embeddedci-mcp/`	An MCP server exposing the SDK as typed tools, so AI agents can drive the bench.
`embeddedci-openhtf`	`packages/embeddedci-openhtf/`	An OpenHTF plug and phase helpers for driving a pod directly over TCP or serial.

The dependency direction is strictly embeddedci-mcp → embeddedci and embeddedci-openhtf → embeddedci. All three live here so an SDK change and the matching wrapper land in one commit; each is published to PyPI on its own tag.

Versioning and stability

All three packages are on the 2.x line, the first with a stability promise:

embeddedci: everything in embeddedci.benchpod.__all__ follows semantic versioning. Units are volts, seconds and hertz; invalid arguments raise ValueError; device state comes back typed. tests/api_surface.json snapshots the public surface.
embeddedci-mcp: tool names, input schemas and annotations are frozen for 2.x (tests/tools_surface.json).
Consumers depend on embeddedci>=2.0,<3.

The surface snapshot tests fail on any change. When a change is intended and compatible (an addition), refresh them deliberately:

bash

UPDATE_API_SURFACE=1 pytest packages/embeddedci/tests/test_api_surface.py
UPDATE_TOOLS_SURFACE=1 pytest packages/embeddedci-mcp/tests/test_server_runtime.py -k surface

The public names are also checked against the documentation: tests/test_docs_coverage.py in embeddedci and embeddedci-openhtf fails when an exported name, a pytest plugin option, fixture, marker or BENCHPOD_* variable, or an OpenHTF plug attribute is missing from the package README. Document a new name in the same change (the embeddedci README has an API reference section for that), or add it to the test's allowlist with the reason.

Migration notes: embeddedci, embeddedci-mcp, embeddedci-openhtf.

Layout

embeddedci-python/
├── pyproject.toml            # uv workspace root (not published)
├── packages/
│   ├── embeddedci/           # SDK + pytest plugin
│   ├── embeddedci-mcp/       # MCP server (console script: embeddedci-mcp)
│   └── embeddedci-openhtf/   # OpenHTF plug (direct TCP/serial)
└── .github/workflows/        # CI for all packages; per-package publish tags

Development

Python 3.10+.

bash

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e "packages/embeddedci[dev]" -e "packages/embeddedci-mcp[dev]" -e "packages/embeddedci-openhtf[dev]"
pytest packages/embeddedci packages/embeddedci-mcp packages/embeddedci-openhtf

Hardware tests skip without a pod. To run them against one:

bash

pytest packages/embeddedci --benchpod-connection 192.168.1.213

The board's I/O voltage (3.3 V) is set once in packages/embeddedci/tests/conftest.py; change it there for a 1V8 board.

Running the MCP server

bash

# launched by an MCP client (Claude Code / Claude Desktop / Cursor) over stdio:
embeddedci-mcp --connection 192.168.1.213

# or served over HTTP for a remote bench (a token is required off loopback):
embeddedci-mcp --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --auth-token "$TOKEN" --connection usb

See packages/embeddedci-mcp/README.md for client configuration and the tool list.

Releasing

Each package publishes from its own tag (embeddedci-v*, embeddedci-mcp-v*, embeddedci-openhtf-v*) via .github/workflows/publish.yml; the tag must match the version in that package's pyproject.toml. Release embeddedci first — the other two depend on it from PyPI. The workflow enforces the version match (scripts/check_release_tag.py) and runs the full CI suite before anything is uploaded. An embeddedci-mcp-v* tag also publishes server.json to the MCP Registry, so its two version fields have to match too.

The Python 3.9 placeholder

packages/embeddedci-py39-shim is published into the same PyPI project as embeddedci 0.2.4, from the embeddedci-py39-shim-v* tag. It exists because 2.x requires Python 3.10+: on 3.9 pip skips 2.x and would otherwise resolve to the last 3.9-compatible release (0.2.3), silently handing the user a pre-2.0 API. Yanking the 0.x releases does not fix that — pip's install path passes allow_yanked=True and only deprioritises yanked candidates, so when they are the only candidates it installs one anyway. The placeholder pins requires-python = ">=3.9,<3.10", so on 3.9 it is the newest installable version and its import fails with an actionable message, while 3.10+ resolution is untouched.

It is excluded from the uv workspace ([tool.uv.workspace] exclude) because it declares the same package name as packages/embeddedci, and its tag pattern deliberately does not start with embeddedci-v so the main publish job cannot fire on it.

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