Imported from oh-ashen-one/blender-agent-skills (blender-mcp-isolated-sessions/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add oh-ashen-one/blender-agent-skills --skill blender-mcp-isolated-sessions. Copyright stays with the author.

Blender MCP isolated sessions

Own your Blender process. Never borrow, reconfigure, or restart somebody else's.

The method

1. Check what's running first. The Blender MCP addon defaults to port 9876. If a Blender GUI or another agent's instance is already serving there, that session is off-limits. Multiple isolated instances are fine — each gets its own process, port, and scene.

2. Spawn a fresh process with factory startup, passing a bootstrap script:

   blender --factory-startup --python work/start_isolated_blender.py

   --factory-startup guarantees the new process does not inherit the running session's addons, scenes, or preferences — so starting it cannot alter the already-running Blender.

3. The bootstrap script (full template in references/start_isolated_blender.py):

   • Loads the blender_mcp addon by file path with importlib.util.spec_from_file_location (it is not installed in the factory-startup process's addon path).
   • Monkey-patches BlenderMCPServer.start to a no-op before calling register() — otherwise the addon auto-starts its server on the default port 9876 during registration and collides with the running session. Restore the real start immediately after register().
   • Deletes any stale bpy.types.blendermcp_server attribute before creating the new server.
   • Creates and starts its own server on the chosen port (e.g. 9877), sets the scene's blendermcp_port property, and sets blendermcp_server_running = True.
   • Tags the scene with ownership custom properties: scene["session_owner"] = "<your-task-name>", scene["mcp_port"] = PORT. Any later session can inspect these before touching the socket.
   • Prints a single ready token, e.g. SESSION_OWNED_BLENDER_MCP_READY port=9877. Grep the process output for that token — do not assume readiness from process spawn.

4. Drive it with a tiny CLI wrapper (references/blender_rpc.py) using the blender_mcp.server.BlenderConnection client pointed at your port. Three subcommands cover everything: scene-info, run-script <path>, code "<source>".

5. The run-script trick: send the file's contents through execute_code as

   exec(compile(open('/abs/path/stage.py', 'r', encoding='utf-8').read(),
                '/abs/path/stage.py', 'exec'), {'__name__': '__main__'})

   Setting __name__ to '__main__' makes scripts written with if __name__ == '__main__': guards run correctly inside the MCP execute_code handler, and compile() with the real filename keeps tracebacks pointing at your file.

6. Verify the connection with live queries, not launch logs: call get_scene_info and confirm the returned scene carries your session_owner/mcp_port tags. An opened Blender window is not proof of an MCP connection.

LESSONS LEARNED

• The addon's register() auto-starts a server on 9876 as a side effect. If you load and register it in a second Blender without suppressing that one call, the second instance either steals the port or errors — and you may have just broken the other session's server. Suppress, register, restore, then start your own.
• Custom scene properties survive saves. Tagging session_owner and mcp_port turned "which Blender is mine?" from guesswork into one scene query.
• bpy.types.blendermcp_server can linger from a previous register/unregister cycle; delete it before assigning your own server or Blender raises on re-registration.
• A separate long-running scene build and an interactive review Blender can coexist happily on one workstation — but only if every session owns its ports and files and nothing reaches into another process's scene.

FAILURE CATALOG

BEST PRACTICES

• One task = one process = one port = one output directory. Record all four in your task notes.
• Pick ports deterministically (9876 + task index) and write them into scene custom props and your README.
• Keep every stage of your build runnable through the CLI wrapper so the whole scene rebuilds from the command line; interactive clicking is not reproducible.
• When finished, close only your own process. Leave other sessions exactly as you found them.