ARM’s MCP Server: What It Does and What It Covers

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ARM’s MCP Server sits on top of Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, an open standard that connects existing ARM migration tools to AI agents like GitHub Copilot. It scans codebases in C, C++, Go, Rust, Java, and Python, then exposes those tools plus a knowledge base and pre-built prompts through a single server. The four use cases are assessment, container porting to multi-arch, development intelligence, and running performance-optimized workflows on ARM-based cloud instances: AWS Graviton, Microsoft Cobalt, and GCP Axion.

Using the MCP Server Inside VS Code

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Joe Stack ran three VS Code workflows to show what the MCP Server actually does in an IDE. In the Dockerfile ARM compatibility check in VS Code (04:19), the agent checked a CentOS base image, found it incompatible with ARM, and offered replacement options. The Python requirements.txt scanner via prompt file (05:32) used a slash command to trigger a prompt file, which called the ARM knowledge base per package and edited the file directly. A third workflow, full migration mode, runs 10 to 20 minutes and rewrites the entire codebase.

The ARM Migration Assistant: Issue-to-PR Automation

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ARM built the Migration Assistant on the GitHub Copilot Coding Agent framework as a purpose-built custom agent. The pitch is simple: file a GitHub issue that says

“migrate my Java service onto ARM asynchronously and autonomously.”

The agent goes off, opens a draft PR with every required change, and waits for a human reviewer to merge. That PR then runs natively on ARM runners via GitHub Actions. Verma framed the scope as anything from a single repo to an entire enterprise fleet of x86 services.

Live Demo: x86 C++ Repo Migrated via GitHub Actions

▶ Watch (09:43)

The demo repo held x86-specific C++ files for hashing, matrix operations, and polynomial evaluation, all built with x86 intrinsics. In the GitHub issue-to-PR migration demo (10:13), Stack filed one GitHub issue, assigned it to the ARM Migration Agent in the Copilot dropdown, and watched GitHub Actions spin up a run. The agent pulled the ARM MCP Server from Docker Hub, analyzed the codebase, replaced x86 intrinsics with ARM64 NEON intrinsics, added ifdefs, and opened a draft PR with a full migration checklist. The run takes 15 to 20 minutes. Reviewers can add comments if the agent misses anything, and it continues autonomously.

Notable Quotes

migrate my Java service onto ARM asynchronously and autonomously. Pareena Verma · ▶ 8:56

It’s available for beta access today. Pareena Verma · ▶ 14:55

So all we have to do here is go create a new issue. Joe Stack · ▶ 10:13

Key Takeaways

  • ARM MCP Server scans C, C++, Java, Go, Rust, and Python codebases and flags what needs to change before migration.
  • A single GitHub issue assigned to the ARM Migration Agent produces a draft PR with x86-to-ARM intrinsic rewrites in 15-20 minutes.
  • The ARM MCP Server is in public beta today; the ARM Migration Assistant custom agent is available in the GitHub Copilot repository.