filesystem vs compass

Side-by-side comparison to help you pick between these two MCP servers.

	filesystem by modelcontextprotocol	compass by raystack
Stars	★ 85,748	★ 67
30d uses	—	—
Score	77	46
Official	✓	—
Categories	File SystemDeveloper ToolsProductivity	Knowledge GraphAI / LLM ToolsDeveloper Tools
Language	TypeScript	Go
Last commit	this month	1 mo ago

filesystem · Summary

A feature-rich MCP server for filesystem operations with dynamic directory access control.

compass · Summary

Compass is a knowledge graph context engine that provides MCP tools for AI agents to search and traverse organizational metadata.

filesystem · Use cases

Enable AI models to read and write project files during development
Allow Claude or other MCP clients to browse and analyze codebases
Provide secure sandboxed access to specific directories for content generation

compass · Use cases

AI agents discovering organizational metadata and system relationships
Impact analysis when making changes to critical systems
Context assembly around entities for comprehensive understanding

filesystem · Install

Installation

Using NPX

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/path/to/allowed/directory"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Using Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "--mount", "type=bind,src=/path/to/allowed/dir,dst=/projects/allowed/dir",
        "mcp/filesystem",
        "/projects"
      ]
    }
  }
}

VS Code Extension

Click the installation buttons in the README to install directly in VS Code.

compass · Install

Install Compass on macOS, Windows, Linux, or via Docker:

# macOS
brew install raystack/tap/compass

# Linux (Debian)
sudo dpkg -i compass_*.deb

# Docker
docker pull raystack/compass:latest

Configure MCP server in .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "compass": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "http://localhost:8080/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Start the server with:

compass config init
compass server migrate
compass server start

Comparison generated from public README + GitHub signals. Last updated automatically.