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clab — Multi-Vendor ContainerLab Management GUI + MCP Server

A web GUI and a Claude MCP server for building, deploying, and operating multi-vendor network topologies on ContainerLab. It supports Aruba/HPE AOS-CX (vr-aoscx) and Juniper vJunos-switch (juniper_vjunosswitch) side by side.

The project ships two front ends:

• clab (GUI) — operate labs from your browser.
• clab-mcp (MCP server) — read and safely change node configs from Claude Desktop over the LAN.

⚠️ This is a lab tool. It ships no real credentials or secrets. The factory-default admin/admin (AOS-CX) and admin/admin@123 (vJunos) logins and a placeholder RADIUS shared secret are the only credentials referenced; the real .env and RADIUS config are git-ignored. Change these before any non-lab use.

Features

GUI (clab)

• Lab management — deploy / destroy / status, with a running-lab selector.
• Apply Config / Preview Config — push a template's config set to the nodes of the loaded lab in one click. The matching template is auto-selected when a lab is loaded (by name or by node-set match), so even generic lab names work.
• Topology view — YAML-driven link drawing on an interactive Cytoscape.js canvas.
• Per-node terminals — WebSocket-backed xterm.js consoles to each node.
• Node detail panel — live information pulled over SSH / API from the selected node.
• Export for MCP — generate a .md describing the lab (including the live network state of attached PCs) to attach in Claude Desktop.
• YAML import / export — round-trip topology files.

MCP server (clab-mcp)

Exposed over Streamable HTTP on :8765 and usable from Claude Desktop via mcp-remote. Tools:

• get_node_facts — basic facts for a node.
• get_node_config — running config.
• run_show — run a read-only show command.
• apply_config — apply config (dry_run by default).
• rollback — roll back the last change.

Architecture

• backend/ — FastAPI app with a NodeDriver abstraction (drivers/aoscx.py, drivers/vjunos_switch.py, drivers/linux.py), dispatched by ContainerLab kind.
• frontend/ — Vanilla JS single-page UI (app.js) using Cytoscape.js + xterm.js.
• mcp_server/ — FastMCP server (Streamable HTTP, port 8765).
• ContainerLab manages the labs using vrnetlab/vr-aoscx and vrnetlab/juniper_vjunos-switch.

Device access paths:

• AOS-CX — REST API v10.16 (cookie login) for facts; SSH for show / running-config / configure terminal.
• vJunos — NETCONF (port 830) + PyEZ (junos-eznc); config is load → diff → commit with rollback support.

Templates (configs/defaults/)

Category	Templates
AOS-CX standard	simple-l2, spine-leaf, vsx-mclag, auth-verify-radius
vJunos	junos-p2p
Multi-vendor (CX × Junos)	cx-junos-interop, cx-junos-p2p-l2, cx-junos-p2p-ospf, cx-junos-ospf-pc-demo
EVPN-VXLAN (all AOS-CX)	evpn-allcx-dynamic, vxlan-allcx-static, allcx-underlay-demo
EVPN-VXLAN (multi-vendor)	evpn-mv-dynamic, evpn-mv-underlay-demo

EVPN-VXLAN notes

• vr-aoscx 10.16.1006 runs EVPN Dynamic VTEP. The key is configuring send-community extended on the BGP neighbor — EVPN route-targets are carried as Extended Communities, and without this the VTEPs are never created.
• Verify with show interface vxlan vteps: look for Origin = evpn and Status = operational.
• A multi-vendor design with a vJunos Spine as the EVPN Route Reflector and AOS-CX Leaves as VTEPs has been verified to bring up Dynamic VTEPs.

Requirements

• A Linux host running ContainerLab (KVM-capable recommended).
• Docker.
• Container images imported into your local Docker:
  • vrnetlab/vr-aoscx:10.16.1006
  • vrnetlab/juniper_vjunos-switch:25.4R1.12
• Python 3.11+.
• Node.js (for mcp-remote, used by Claude Desktop).

Appliance images (.ova / .qcow2) are not included in this repo.

Quick start

GUI

cp .env.example .env        # adjust credentials
docker compose up -d --build
# open http://<host>:8888

MCP server

systemctl start clab-mcp     # Streamable HTTP on <host>:8765/mcp

Then point Claude Desktop at it via mcp-remote (key clab-mcp):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clab-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "http://<host>:8765/mcp", "--allow-http"]
    }
  }
}

Typical flow: in the GUI choose Export for MCP, attach the generated .md to Claude Desktop, then operate the nodes in natural language.

Lab data and runtime configs live under ~/claude/cx-clab/ (labs/ and configs/) and are not tracked by git.

Layout

backend/           FastAPI app + NodeDriver abstraction
frontend/          Browser GUI (Cytoscape.js + xterm.js)
mcp_server/        Claude MCP server (FastMCP)
configs/defaults/  Template config sets
Dockerfile         Builds the GUI image (bundles containerlab + docker CLI)
docker-compose.yml

Security

• Real secrets are never committed. .gitignore excludes the real .env, labs/ runtime artifacts, the vendored vrnetlab/, and large appliance images.
• The bundled configs/ are lab defaults: the RADIUS shared secret is a placeholder and the logins are the vendor factory defaults (admin/admin, admin/admin@123). Change these before any non-lab use.
• Lab-internal IPs are kept as-is for out-of-the-box reproducibility.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.