@fswap/mcp Outline

@fswap/mcp-outline

An MCP server for Outline that lets Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients search, read, create and update your wiki.

Runs locally over stdio. No install step — clients launch it with npx.

Quick start

1. Create an API token in Outline under Settings → API.

2. Run the interactive setup once:

   npx -y @fswap/mcp-outline@latest setup
   

   It asks for your Outline URL and token, verifies them against auth.info, and stores them in your OS config directory (mode 0600).

3. Add the server to your client. At the end, setup offers to do this for you in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and Codex: clients it finds are pre-selected (except Claude Code when Claude Desktop is installed, because the desktop app's Code tab already loads claude_desktop_config.json), an existing outline entry is only replaced after you confirm, and any config file it changes gets a one-time .bak copy.

   To add it by hand instead, use the snippets below. Every value asked in setup can be skipped with Enter; anything you skip goes into the env block instead. setup --print shows these snippets again at any time.

   Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) and Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json or <project>/.cursor/mcp.json):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "outline": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "@fswap/mcp-outline@latest"]
       }
     }
   }
   

   Codex (~/.codex/config.toml):

   [mcp_servers.outline]
   command = "npx"
   args = ["-y", "@fswap/mcp-outline@latest"]
   

   Claude Code:

   claude mcp add outline -- npx -y @fswap/mcp-outline@latest
   

Without setup (environment variables)

Environment variables take precedence over the config file, so you can skip setup entirely (or skip individual values in it and set them here):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "outline": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@fswap/mcp-outline@latest"],
      "env": {
        "OUTLINE_URL": "https://app.getoutline.com",
        "OUTLINE_API_TOKEN": "ol_api_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Codex equivalent:

[mcp_servers.outline]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@fswap/mcp-outline@latest"]
[mcp_servers.outline.env]
OUTLINE_URL = "https://app.getoutline.com"
OUTLINE_API_TOKEN = "ol_api_..."

Tools

API errors are returned to the model as isError results rather than crashing the server.

Development

TypeScript source in src/, bundled to dist/ with tsdown. Only dist/ is published.

npm install
npm run build        # tsdown → dist/index.js
npm run lint         # eslint (typescript-eslint)
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
npm test             # builds, then spawns the server and checks the tool list
npm run check        # all of the above (also runs on prepublishOnly)
OUTLINE_URL=... OUTLINE_API_TOKEN=... npm run inspect   # MCP Inspector UI against dist/

Never write to stdout from server code — it is the protocol channel. Use console.error.

Reset

npx -y @fswap/mcp-outline@latest setup --reset

License

MIT