Community project: driving ArcGIS Pro from an AI agent (ArcPy CLI + live MCP bridge) — is agent/MCP integration on the team's radar?

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python
Domain
ai, api

Research direction

Review the issue and the linked CLI-Anything-Arcgis-Pro repository to understand the proposed ArcPy CLI and ArcGIS Pro SDK/.NET MCP bridge. The issue does not identify a file, test, or requested change; it seeks the team's direction on agent/MCP integration, alignment, and whether discussion should move to Esri Community.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi ArcGIS API for Python / GeoAI team 👋

I built an open-source bridge that lets an LLM agent (e.g. Claude) operate ArcGIS Pro end to end, and wanted to share it with the team that's closest to Esri's GeoAI work — and ask whether agent/MCP integration is something you're exploring.

Repo: https://github.com/Jasper0122/CLI-Anything-Arcgis-Pro

It has two modes:

  • Headless CLI over ArcPy — info / project / layout (incl. Map Series) / data / gp (any geoprocessing tool) / batch, JSON in / JSON out, with self-dispatch into Pro's arcgispro-py3.
  • Live bridge + MCP — an in-process ArcGIS Pro SDK (.NET 8) add-in exposes the open Pro session over a local socket, wrapped as MCP tools (ping / zoom_to / query / run_gp / export_layout), so an agent drives the running project and you watch it happen in the UI.

I know this repo is the Web GIS arcgis package rather than ArcPy / the Pro SDK — I'm posting here because the audience and the GeoAI direction overlap, and I'd value the team's perspective.

A few open questions:

  1. Is agent / MCP / tool-calling integration with ArcGIS something the team is looking at?
  2. If so, is there a preferred direction the community should build toward (so efforts align rather than fragment)?
  3. Any interest in feedback or a community contribution on this front?

(Not affiliated with Esri; ArcGIS, ArcGIS Pro and ArcPy are trademarks of Esri. This is an independent community integration.)

Happy to demo or move this to Esri Community if that's a better venue. Thanks!

Dominant language
Python
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