Our original idea was to use Mineflayer with an MCP server to automate builds in Minecraft. But we had issues connecting this to online servers and making it efficient enough to be justified. We were successful in connect to local instances, but we wanted our solution to be fully in the cloud.

As a workaround, we instead use RCON to remotely connect to a live server’s console. From there we can easily send AI generate commands based on user input to very quickly create builds on a live server. All this despite the RCON wiki stating
“It is dangerous to expose RCON ports to the internet. RCON is not encrypted and can be a subject to man-in-the-middle attacks.”

We gather data from user input:

Run a prompt to generate commands using the new (preview) prompt columns in Dataverse.

And run those commands via a Power Automate flow that triggers an Azure function that connects to the live server using RCON and passes along the commands:

The big benefit is that we don’t need to send an virtual player into Minecraft to build the structures, RCON directly updates the Minecraft data, which means a build can take seconds over minutes, and again, fully operates in the cloud.

Nasty hacks? Absolutely. We are hardening the process by using non-standard ports and limiting IPs to just connections coming from our own machines and the Power Platform. Even then there needs to be additional work to fully encrypt and protect our Minecraft environments.

Our goal was to get running software, which was achieved. Connecting the Power Platform to Minecraft turned out the be much more challenging then first believed.

We feel dirty, nasty, and deserving of the Nasty Hack badge.