Mechanic Development Hub

Mechanic is the unified platform for WoW addon development, providing CLI tools, MCP integration, a web dashboard, and in-game diagnostics.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   Mechanic Desktop                   │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  │
│  │  CLI (mech) │  │ MCP Server  │  │  Dashboard  │  │
│  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
                          │ SavedVariables Sync
┌─────────────────────────▼───────────────────────────┐
│                  !Mechanic Addon                     │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  │
│  │   Console   │  │   Errors    │  │    Tests    │  │
│  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

MCP Tools (Use These First)

MANDATORY: ALWAYS use MCP tools directly instead of the shell.

Task	MCP Tool
Env Status	env.status()
Get Addon Output	addon.output(agent_mode=true)
Lint Addon	addon.lint(addon="MyAddon")
Format Addon	addon.format(addon="MyAddon")
Run Tests	addon.test(addon="MyAddon")
Sync Addon	addon.sync(addon="MyAddon")
Search APIs	api.search(query="*Spell*")

Components

CLI (mech)

Command-line interface for all operations:

• mech lint <addon> - Run Luacheck
• mech format <addon> - Run StyLua
• mech test <addon> - Run Busted tests
• mech release <addon> <version> "<message>" - Full release workflow

MCP Server

Exposes 53 AFD commands as MCP tools for AI agents. All functionality available via mech call <command> is also available as MCP tools.

Dashboard

Web UI at http://localhost:5173:

• Real-time SavedVariables sync
• Reload trigger button
• Error/test/console log viewer

In-Game Modules

The !Mechanic addon provides:

• Console - Aggregated print output from all registered addons
• Errors - BugGrabber integration for Lua error capture
• Tests - In-game test results from MechanicLib tests
• Inspect - Frame inspector for UI debugging
• API Bench - Performance testing for WoW APIs

MechanicLib Integration

Addons register with Mechanic via MechanicLib:

local ML = LibStub("MechanicLib")
ML:RegisterAddon("MyAddon", {
    version = "1.0.0",
    Print = function(...) ML:Print("MyAddon", ...) end,
})

Routing Logic

Request type	Load reference
CLI commands	references/cli-commands.md
AFD commands	references/afd-commands.md
In-game modules	references/ingame-modules.md
MechanicLib	references/mechaniclib.md
Dashboard	references/dashboard.md