NCP Palo Alto MCP

Aviz Networks fork of apius-tech/Palo-MCP for use as an NCP Local MCP connector (same pattern as nexus-dashboard-mcp).

Why this repo

• Upstream: community PAN-OS MCP (pinned; do not float on main)
• NCP: package as aviz/ncp-paloalto-mcp and start via Local MCP tab
• NetOps surface: agent allowlist of useful tools only — not all 117 tools
• Gaps: custom XML wrappers for interface counters, rule hit counts, labeled CPU/RAM, environmentals, and NTP (see docs/NETOPS_TOOL_PLAN.md)

Upstream pin

Field	Value
Upstream	https://github.com/apius-tech/Palo-MCP
Version	1.3.29
Commit	4c2cea57677ee2a204e01eff8705229c14b2134b

git fetch upstream
git log -1 upstream/main   # or a release tag

LocalMCP

Endpoints expected by ncp-api:

Path	Method	Purpose
/mcp/sse	GET	MCP SSE stream
/mcp/messages?sessionId=…	POST	JSON-RPC messages
/health	GET	Container health

Env vars match what ncp-api injects for Palo Alto LocalMCP (PANOS_HOST, PANOS_API_KEY or username/password, PANOS_VERIFY_TLS, MCP_API_TOKEN, MCP_TRANSPORT=sse, port 8001).

TLS: PANOS_VERIFY_TLS defaults to true in this fork. Lab self-signed firewalls should set false explicitly (ncp-api already passes connector verify_ssl).

Image

ncp-api starts aviz/ncp-paloalto-mcp:${PALOALTO_MCP_IMAGE_TAG} (default community-dev). This is not DATA_CONNECTORS_IMAGE_TAG — the Kafka API collector stays on aviz/ncp-firewall-collector:<shared-tag>.

docker build -t aviz/ncp-paloalto-mcp:community-dev .

Do not retag over :v1.7.0 / :v1.8.0 (those were the retired Python POC).

Local stdio (unchanged upstream behavior):

npm ci && npm start

Agent

Custom agent package: ncp-sdk-agent/ (panos-mcp-agent 0.2.0). Allowlist is community tool names plus Aviz wrappers. Writes are add_security_rule and commit with agent-side confirm-before-call.

ncp validate ncp-sdk-agent
ncp pack ncp-sdk-agent
ncp onboard ncp-sdk-agent

Chat with /panos-mcp-agent on a project that has the Palo Alto Local MCP connector assigned.

Status

• Step 1 (done): tool coverage map → docs/NETOPS_TOOL_PLAN.md
• Step 2 (done): LocalMCP SSE entrypoint + Dockerfile + TLS defaults
• Step 3 (done): ncp-api uses PALOALTO_MCP_IMAGE_TAG (not the POC image)
• Step 4 (done): agent allowlist + confirm-before-write
• Step 5 (done): custom gap wrappers in this fork
• Step 6: lab chat validation

Not in scope (for now)

• Panorama tools
• Shipping all write/delete/run_op_command tools to chat
• Replacing the Kafka API collector path

License

MIT (same as upstream Palo-MCP). Upstream README preserved at docs/UPSTREAM_README.md.