PowerShell MCP Server Manager for Gemini CLI

[NEO10111]

💡 Idea: MCP Server Manager for Gemini CLI (Enable/Disable MCPs like Extensions)

Hey everyone 👋,

The Gemini CLI already provides several useful commands to manage MCP servers — you can add, list, and remove them easily.

However, one key feature still seems to be missing: the ability to temporarily enable or disable an MCP server without deleting it from the configuration.

This makes it a bit inconvenient when you want to quickly toggle between multiple MCP setups — for example, testing one server while keeping others inactive.

To experiment with a potential solution, I created a small PowerShell tool called MCP Server Manager.
It extends the current MCP management features by adding the missing enable/disable functionality and a few safety utilities.

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🚀 What It Does

• Enable/Disable MCP servers just like extensions — without deleting them.
• List Servers — Clearly see which MCPs are active or disabled.
• Add/Remove — Easily add or permanently delete servers.
• Auto-detects your settings.json file used by Gemini CLI.
• Backups your settings before every change.
• Validation & Repair for corrupted configurations.

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⚙️ Example Usage

# List all servers
mcp-manager list

# Add a new MCP server
mcp-manager add playwright npx -y @executeautomation/playwright-mcp-server

# Disable a server (moves it to a disabled section)
mcp-manager disable filesystem

# Enable it again
mcp-manager enable filesystem

Example Output:

╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║           ACTIVE MCP SERVERS         ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
• filesystem [ACTIVE]
  Command: npx
  Args: -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem

╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║          DISABLED MCP SERVERS        ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
• chrome-devtools [DISABLED]
  Command: npx
  Args: -y @gemini-cli/chrome-mcp-server

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🧠 Why I Built This

Even though Gemini CLI already supports several MCP management commands, it doesn’t yet allow toggling servers on or off dynamically — similar to how extensions can be managed in other tools.

This script is a small attempt to fill that gap and make it easier to experiment with different MCP environments without constantly editing or deleting entries from settings.json.

It’s written in PowerShell, so it runs natively on Windows and works with PowerShell Core on macOS/Linux.

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💬 Discussion Points

• Would it make sense for Gemini CLI to include an official enable/disable feature for MCP servers?
• Should there be a native command like gemini mcp disable <name> and gemini mcp enable <name>?
• Would a NodeJS or Python version be more useful for full cross-platform integration?

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📦 Repo

👉 GitHub Repository (gemini-mcp-manager)
(not official yet — just sharing the idea and getting feedback!)

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Thanks for reading!
I’d love to hear your thoughts — maybe this could inspire a native MCP extension management system in the Gemini CLI itself.

[b3nw]

seems like this should be a FR?