Romm

An MCP server for RomM — the self-hosted retro game library manager. 40 tools: 26 read-only for browsing platforms, searching ROMs, viewing metadata, collections (regular, smart, and virtual), saves, play activity, and tasks — plus 14 write tools for play status, play sessions, favorites, notes, and collection management, through any MCP-compatible AI assistant.

Tools

Read

Tool	Description
romm_status	Check server configuration and reachability
romm_stats	Library-wide statistics (platforms, ROMs, saves, total size)
romm_platforms	List platforms with ROM counts and sizes
romm_library_items	Browse ROMs with filtering and pagination
romm_recent	Recently added or updated ROMs
romm_get_item	Full ROM detail — metadata, saves, user status
romm_search	Search ROMs by name
romm_search_by_hash	Identify a ROM by file hash (CRC, MD5, SHA1, or RetroAchievements)
romm_filters	Available filter values (genres, regions, languages, tags)
romm_collections	List user-curated collections
romm_collection_detail	List ROMs in a specific collection
romm_smart_collections	List auto-generated smart collections
romm_saves	List save files by ROM or platform
romm_user_profile	Browse by status (now playing, backlog, completed, etc.)
romm_rom_notes	View notes on a ROM
romm_firmware	List BIOS/firmware files per platform
romm_devices	List registered devices
romm_tasks	List registered tasks (schedule, manual-run availability) and running status
romm_scan_library	Trigger a background library rescan (blocked over REST on RomM 5.0 — see Known issues)
romm_activity	Recent play activity feed — who played what, when (5.0+)
romm_play_sessions	List recorded play sessions with durations (5.0+)
romm_virtual_collections	Automatic groupings by genre/franchise/company/etc. (5.0+)
romm_virtual_collection_detail	List ROMs in a virtual collection (5.0+)
romm_smart_collection_detail	A smart collection's rules and matching ROMs (5.0+)
romm_whoami	Authenticated account, role, and effective permissions
romm_metadata_search	Search metadata providers (IGDB etc.) for ROM matches (5.0+)

Write

These modify your own user data and collections. They cannot alter ROM files, platforms, firmware, other users, or save files.

Tool	Description
romm_set_status	Set play status, backlog, now-playing, rating, completion, last-played
romm_favorite	Add or remove a ROM from your favorites
romm_add_note	Add a note to a ROM
romm_update_note	Edit an existing note
romm_delete_note	Delete a note (permanent)
romm_create_collection	Create a new collection
romm_add_to_collection	Add ROMs to a collection
romm_remove_from_collection	Remove ROMs from a collection
romm_delete_collection	Delete a collection — the grouping only, not the ROMs (permanent)
romm_log_play_session	Record a play session on a ROM (5.0+)
romm_delete_play_session	Delete one of your play sessions (permanent, 5.0+)
romm_create_smart_collection	Create a smart collection — a saved filter that auto-matches ROMs (5.0+)
romm_update_smart_collection	Edit a smart collection's name/description/rules (5.0+)
romm_delete_smart_collection	Delete a smart collection — the saved filter only (permanent, 5.0+)

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• A running RomM instance (v5.0+; most read tools also work on v4.4+)
• An enabled RomM user account — admin is not required (see Auth)

Install

pip install fastmcp httpx

Or clone and install:

git clone https://github.com/lodordev/mcp-romm.git
cd mcp-romm
pip install .

Configure

Set environment variables:

Variable	Required	Default	Description
ROMM_URL	No	http://localhost:3000	Your RomM instance URL
ROMM_USERNAME	Yes		RomM username
ROMM_PASSWORD	Yes		RomM password
ROMM_REQUEST_TIMEOUT	No	30	Default request timeout (seconds)
ROMM_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_LONG	No	60	Timeout for slow endpoints
ROMM_TLS_VERIFY	No	true	Verify TLS certificates
ROMM_MCP_TRANSPORT	No	stdio	stdio (client spawns the process) or http (serve remote MCP clients)
ROMM_MCP_HOST	No	127.0.0.1	Bind address for http transport
ROMM_MCP_PORT	No	8765	Port for http transport

Add to Claude Code

Add to your .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "romm": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/path/to/mcp-romm/server.py"],
      "env": {
        "ROMM_URL": "http://your-romm-instance:3000",
        "ROMM_USERNAME": "your-username",
        "ROMM_PASSWORD": "your-password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Add to Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "romm": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/path/to/mcp-romm/server.py"],
      "env": {
        "ROMM_URL": "http://your-romm-instance:3000",
        "ROMM_USERNAME": "your-username",
        "ROMM_PASSWORD": "your-password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Remote (HTTP) transport

By default the server speaks stdio and is spawned by the client. To host it as a shared network service instead — e.g. one instance on your homelab that all your machines use — set:

ROMM_MCP_TRANSPORT=http ROMM_MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 ROMM_MCP_PORT=8765 python server.py

Then point clients at it, e.g. Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http romm http://your-host:8765/mcp

The HTTP transport has no authentication of its own — bind it to a trusted network only (LAN, VPN, or an overlay network like Tailscale), never the open internet. Note that claude.ai web/mobile connectors connect from Anthropic's cloud and cannot reach private-network URLs.

Examples

Once configured, you can ask your AI assistant things like:

• "What platforms do I have in RomM?"
• "Search for Zelda games"
• "Show me my backlog"
• "How many ROMs do I have total?"
• "What was recently added?"
• "Show me the saves for Super Metroid"
• "What's in my favorites?"
• "List my firmware files for PlayStation"
• "What tasks are running?"
• "What devices are registered?"

And, with the write tools:

• "Mark Chrono Trigger as finished"
• "Favorite Super Metroid"
• "Add it to my backlog and rate it 9"
• "Make a collection called 'SNES RPGs' and add ROMs 10, 11, and 12"
• "Add a note to this ROM: 'glitch at the second boss, save often'"

Security

• Least privilege. The OAuth2 token requests only the read scopes the tools use plus roms.user.write, collections.write, and tasks.run. It deliberately does not request roms.write, platforms.write, firmware.write, assets.write, users.write, or me.write — no tool uses them.
• Bounded write surface. Write tools change only your own user data (play status, favorites, notes) and your own collections. No tool edits ROM files, platforms, firmware, other users, or uploads/deletes save files.
• Destructive ops are labeled. romm_delete_note and romm_delete_collection permanently remove data and say so in their descriptions. (romm_delete_collection removes the grouping, not the ROMs.)
• No disk writes. Credentials and tokens are held in memory only, never written to disk.
• TLS by default. Certificate verification is enabled by default (ROMM_TLS_VERIFY=true).
• Auto-retry. If a token expires mid-session, the server re-authenticates transparently.

Auth

The server uses OAuth2 password grant to authenticate with RomM. Tokens are scoped to the minimum permissions needed and automatically refreshed when they expire. If a request gets a 401, the server re-authenticates and retries once.

Note: The read and write tools operate on your own library and user data, so an ordinary enabled RomM user account is sufficient — admin is not required. (romm_scan_library does require an account permitted to run tasks.)

RomM 5.0 role change: RomM 5.0 collapsed the old viewer/editor/admin roles into user/admin and moved fine-grained authorization to a permissions system (legacy roles are coerced to user on upgrade). If a tool unexpectedly gets a 403 on a 5.0 instance, check the account's effective permissions (GET /api/permissions/me) in the RomM admin UI.

Known issues

All three are RomM 5.0.0 server-side issues, found by running this server's live e2e suite (smoke_test.py) against a 5.0.0 instance:

• romm_filters times out. GET /api/roms/filters in RomM 5.0.0 executes a query with a cartesian product (RomM's log flags it at roms_handler.py:2159); the request hangs until the client timeout, and the abandoned query keeps running server-side at high CPU. Avoid calling romm_filters on 5.0.0 until this is fixed upstream — every call strands another runaway database query.
• Note listing 500s once any note exists. RomM 5.0.0's GET /api/roms/{id}/notes fails serialization (UserNoteSchema validation in endpoints/roms/notes.py) whenever the ROM has at least one note. Creating and deleting notes work; romm_rom_notes (and the read-back after romm_add_note) will error until fixed upstream.
• Library scans can't be triggered over REST. RomM 5.0.0 flags scan_library as manual_run: false, so POST /api/tasks/run/scan_library is rejected. romm_scan_library reports this instead of failing; scans run on the configured schedule or from the web UI.

License

MIT. See CHANGELOG.md for release history.