rosetta

MCP server that gives AI assistants searchable access to the complete MikroTik RouterOS documentation — 317 pages, 4,860 properties, 40,000-entry command tree, hardware specs for 144 products, and direct links to help.mikrotik.com.

If you need MikroTik docs, you likely have a MikroTik. Install rosetta once as a container on your router using RouterOS /app, and any AI assistant on the network can use it. Or run it locally on your workstation.

Instead of vector embeddings, rosetta uses SQLite FTS5 full-text search as the retrieval layer — SQL-as-RAG. For structured technical docs, BM25 ranking with porter stemming beats vector similarity: terms like dhcp-snooping and /ip/firewall/filter are exact tokens, not fuzzy embeddings. No API keys, no vector database — just a single SQLite file that searches in milliseconds.

• 317 documentation pages from MikroTik's official help site (~515K words)
• 4,860 property definitions with types, defaults, and descriptions
• 5,114 commands in the RouterOS command hierarchy (551 directories, 34K arguments)
• 1,034 callout blocks — warnings, notes, and tips with important caveats
• 144 hardware products — CPU, RAM, storage, ports, PoE, wireless, license level, pricing
• 2,874 performance benchmarks — ethernet and IPSec throughput test results for 125 devices (64/512/1518-byte packets, multiple routing/bridging modes), plus block diagrams for 110
• 46 RouterOS versions tracked (7.9 through 7.23beta2) for command history
• Direct links to help.mikrotik.com for every page and section

RouterOS 7.22+ includes the /app feature for running containers directly on the router. This is the simplest way to deploy rosetta — install once, and any AI assistant on your network can connect to the MCP endpoint URL shown in the router UI.

Requirements: RouterOS 7.22+, x86 or ARM64 architecture (CCR, RB5009, hAP ax series, CHR, etc.), container package installed, device-mode enabled.

If you haven't already enabled the container package and device-mode:

# Install the container package (router reboots automatically)
/system/package/update/check-for-updates duration=10s
/system/package/enable container
# Apply changes restarts the router

After reboot:

# Enable container device-mode (requires physical power cycle or button press — follow the on-screen prompt)
/system/device-mode/update mode=advanced container=yes

See MikroTik's Container documentation for full prerequisites and troubleshooting.

/app/add use-https=yes disabled=no yaml="name: rosetta
descr: \"RouterOS Docs for AI assistants - use URL as MCP server\"
page: https://tikoci.github.io/p/rosetta
category: development
icon: https://tikoci.github.io/p/rosetta.svg
default-credentials: \"none - just use 'ui-url' as the MCP server in your AI assistant\"
url-path: /mcp
auto-update: true
services:
  rosetta:
    image: ghcr.io/tikoci/rosetta:latest
    container_name: mcp-server
    ports:
      - 9803:8080/tcp:web
"

That's it. RouterOS downloads the container image, configures networking and firewall redirects, and starts the MCP server. The auto-update: true setting pulls the latest image on each boot.

The URL to use with your AI assistant is shown as UI URL in WebFig (App → rosetta), or from the CLI:

:put [/app/get rosetta ui-url]

This URL includes the /mcp path and is ready to paste into any MCP client that supports HTTP transport. With use-https=yes, the URL uses HTTPS with a MikroTik-managed *.routingthecloud.net certificate.

Point any HTTP-capable MCP client at the URL from the previous step:

{ "url": "https://app-rosetta.XXX.routingthecloud.net/mcp" }

CHR note: Cloud Hosted Router in free or trial mode does not include the /ip/cloud service needed for HTTPS certificates. Set use-https=no on the /app — the URL will use HTTP instead. The UI URL always reflects the correct protocol.

HTTP option: On any platform, you may choose use-https=no if you prefer HTTP or are on an isolated network.

Run rosetta on your workstation using Bun. The MCP server runs over stdio — no network configuration needed. The database downloads automatically on first launch (~50 MB compressed).

bunx @tikoci/rosetta --setup

This downloads the database and prints config snippets for all supported MCP clients. Copy-paste the config for your client and you're done.

"mcp": {
  "servers": {
    "rosetta": {
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@tikoci/rosetta"]
    }
  }
}

claude mcp add rosetta -- bunx @tikoci/rosetta

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rosetta": {
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@tikoci/rosetta"]
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rosetta": {
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@tikoci/rosetta"]
    }
  }
}

codex mcp add rosetta -- bunx @tikoci/rosetta

Install Bun (if you don't have it):

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

# Windows
powershell -c "irm bun.sh/install.ps1 | iex"

Auto-update: bunx checks the npm registry each session and uses the latest published version automatically. The database in ~/.rosetta/ros-help.db persists across updates.

Download a compiled binary from Releases — no Bun, Node.js, or other runtime needed.

./rosetta --setup    # downloads DB + prints MCP client config

macOS Gatekeeper: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./rosetta or System Settings → Privacy & Security → Allow Anyway. Windows SmartScreen: Click More info → Run anyway.

Ask your AI assistant questions like:

• "What are the DHCP server properties in RouterOS?"
• "How do I set up a bridge VLAN?"
• "Is the /container command available in RouterOS 7.12?"
• "What are the firewall filter default chains?"
• "Show me warnings about hardware offloading"
• "Which MikroTik routers have L3HW offload, and more than 8 ports of 48V PoE? Include cost."
• "Compare the RB5009 and CCR2004 IPSec throughput at 1518-byte packets."

The server provides 11 tools, designed to work together:

The AI assistant typically starts with routeros_search, then drills into specific pages, properties, or the command tree based on what it finds. Each tool's description includes workflow hints (e.g., "→ use routeros_get_page to read full content") and empty-result suggestions so the AI knows how to chain tools together — this is where most of the tuning effort goes.

The MikroTik /app install is the easiest way to get an HTTP endpoint. For other setups, rosetta supports the MCP Streamable HTTP transport via --http:

rosetta --http                    # http://localhost:8080/mcp
rosetta --http --port 9090        # custom port
rosetta --http --host 0.0.0.0    # accessible from LAN

Then point your MCP client at the URL:

{ "url": "http://localhost:8080/mcp" }

• Read-only — queries a local SQLite database, stores nothing.
• No authentication — designed for local/trusted-network use. Use a reverse proxy for public exposure.
• TLS built-in — --tls-cert cert.pem --tls-key key.pem for direct HTTPS without a proxy.
• Defaults to localhost — LAN binding (--host 0.0.0.0) requires an explicit flag.

Multi-arch OCI images (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64) are published with each release:

• ghcr.io/tikoci/rosetta (GitHub Container Registry)
• ammo74/rosetta (Docker Hub)

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/tikoci/rosetta:latest

These are the same images used by the MikroTik /app install. Tags: latest, version (e.g., v0.2.1), and sha-<commit>.

The database combines multiple MikroTik data sources into a single SQLite file with FTS5 full-text search, porter stemming, and BM25 ranking:

• HTML Documentation — Confluence space export from help.mikrotik.com (March 2026). 317 pages broken into sections, callouts, and property tables (~515K words) with links back to help.mikrotik.com.

• Command Tree — inspect.json from tikoci/restraml, generated by running /console/inspect against RouterOS CHR under QEMU for every version since 7.9 (46 versions tracked: 7.9–7.23beta2).

• Product Matrix — CSV export from mikrotik.com/products/matrix (144 products, 34 columns). Hardware specs, license levels, and pricing.

• Device Benchmarks — Ethernet bridging/routing and IPSec throughput test results scraped from individual product pages on mikrotik.com (2,874 measurements across 125 devices; 64/512/1518-byte packets, multiple configurations). Also captures block diagram image URLs for 110 devices.

Documentation covers RouterOS v7 only and aligns with the long-term release (~7.22) at export time. v6 had different syntax and major subsystems — answers for v6 are unreliable.

The SQLite database is downloadable on its own from GitHub Releases:

https://github.com/tikoci/rosetta/releases/latest/download/ros-help.db.gz

Use it with any SQLite client:

sqlite3 ros-help.db "SELECT title, url FROM pages_fts WHERE pages_fts MATCH 'DHCP lease' ORDER BY rank LIMIT 5;"

Each content table has a corresponding FTS5 index (e.g., pages_fts, properties_fts, devices_fts).

See CONTRIBUTING.md for building from source, running tests, development setup, and the release process.

MIT