outline

This MCP server exposes Outline's API via the Model Context Protocol, enabling AI agents to manage Outline documents, collections, comments, and users through a standardized interface. It supports multiple connection modes, including HTTP/SSE with token-based authentication and a stdio mode for local, embeddable usage. Once running, you can query the server to list, create, update, or delete documents and collections, attach comments, and fetch user information, all using MCP-compatible requests. The server can be integrated into agents like Claude (via Cursor) or other tooling that supports MCP and can authenticate using either request headers or a shared API key environment variable. When using stdio mode, an Outline API key must be provided via environment variables; for HTTP/SSE modes you can either supply the key in headers on each request or set it in OUTLINE_API_KEY for fallback authentication.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js v24 or higher
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• Access to an Outline workspace with API access and an API key

1. Install the MCP server locally (via npx or as a dependency):

# Quick run using npx (recommended for development)
OUTLINE_API_KEY=your_key_here npx -y outline-mcp-server@latest

2. If you prefer to pin a package version or run via stdio mode:

OUTLINE_API_KEY=your_key_here npx -y --package=outline-mcp-server@latest -c outline-mcp-server-stdio

3. Optional: install dependencies and run in development mode

git clone https://github.com/mmmeff/outline-mcp.git
cd outline-mcp
npm install
# Start in dev / watch mode if available
npm run dev

4. Verify configuration (Cursor/JSON): create an mcp.json snippet as described in the Cursor section of the README and ensure the environment variables are set correctly.

5. Run the server and test connectivity using an MCP client (e.g., Claude via Cursor) by pointing it at the host/port specified (default 6060).

Tips and common considerations:

• Authentication: For stdio mode, OUTLINE_API_KEY is required. For HTTP/SSE, you can provide the API key in request headers or rely on OUTLINE_API_KEY as a fallback.
• Outline API URL can be overridden with OUTLINE_API_URL if you're using a self-hosted Outline instance.
• Bind address and port can be customized via OUTLINE_MCP_HOST and OUTLINE_MCP_PORT.
• When deploying via Docker, you can pass environment variables through an .env file or runtime -e flags to override defaults.
• The server supports multiple protocols (HTTP/SSE and stdio) to fit different agent integration patterns.
• If you encounter authentication errors, double-check that the API key has the necessary permissions in Outline and that the key is correctly provided to the server (env var or headers).