Pixel Art MCP

simplepixelart-mcp

An MCP server that gives AI assistants (Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code…) real pixel art tools: turn any image into pixel art, extract a palette, recolour sprites to PICO-8 or Game Boy colours, and upscale without blur.

Runs locally, works on PNG and JPEG files or image URLs, no API keys, no native dependencies.

Tools

Tool	What it does
pixelate_image	Image → pixel art. Shrinks to a pixel grid (e.g. 64 px wide), reduces to N colours with median cut or maps to a named palette, saves a PNG (optionally upscaled for preview).
extract_palette	Pulls the main colours out of an image and returns hex codes plus a GIMP / Aseprite .gpl palette.
remap_palette	Recolours existing pixel art so every pixel uses a palette colour — PICO-8, Sweetie 16, ENDESGA 32, Game Boy, 1-bit or your own hex list.
upscale_pixel_art	Nearest-neighbour upscale by a whole number, so pixels stay sharp.
list_palettes	Lists the built-in palettes.

Install

Add it to your MCP client config. For Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json), Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json) and most other clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pixel-art": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "simplepixelart-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add pixel-art -- npx -y simplepixelart-mcp

Requires Node.js 18 or newer.

Examples

Ask your assistant things like:

• "Turn ~/photos/cat.jpg into 48 px wide pixel art with the PICO-8 palette, and save an 8x preview."
• "Extract a 6-colour palette from this screenshot and give me the .gpl file."
• "Recolour every sprite in assets/ to the Game Boy palette."
• "Upscale hero.png 10x for the store page."

Use it as a library

import { loadImage, pixelate, saveImage } from 'simplepixelart-mcp/src/pixel.js'

const img = await loadImage('photo.jpg')
const { display, palette } = pixelate(img, { width: 64, palette: 'sweetie-16', scale: 8 })
await saveImage(display, 'photo-pixel.png')

Want to edit the result?

The tools get you a clean starting grid; the fun part is fixing it by hand. Open the PNG in SimplePixelArt, a free online pixel art editor with layers, animation and tileset tools, or try its in-browser pixel art converter for live adjustments. No account needed.

Development

npm install
npm test        # starts the server over stdio and calls every tool

License

MIT © Comficker