Anki MCP Server

An MCP server implementation that connects to a locally running Anki, providing card review and creation.

This server is designed to work with the Anki desktop app and the Anki-Connect add-on.

Resources

• anki://search/deckcurrent
  • Returns all cards from current deck
  • Equivalent of deck:current in Anki
• anki://search/isdue
  • Returns cards in review and learning waiting to be studied
  • Equivalent of is:due in Anki
• anki://search/isnew
  • Returns all unseen cards
  • Equivalent of is:new in Anki

Tools

• update_cards

  • Marks cards with given card IDs as answered and gives them an ease score between 1 (Again) and 4 (Easy)
  • Inputs:
    • answers (array): Array of objects with cardId (number) and ease (number) fields

• add_card

  • Creates a new card in the Default Anki deck
  • Inputs:
    • front (string): Front of card
    • back (string): Back of card

Prompts

• high_quality_cards_prompt
  • Prompt with guidelines for creating high-quality cards
  • Based on Andy Matuschak's How to write good prompts

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build the server:

npm run build

For development with auto-rebuild:

npm run watch

Configuration

To use with Claude Desktop, add the server config:

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anki-server": {
      "command": "/path/to/anki-server/build/index.js"
    }
  }
}

Debugging

Since MCP servers communicate over stdio, debugging can be challenging. We recommend using the MCP Inspector, which is available as a package script:

npm run inspector

The Inspector will provide a URL to access debugging tools in your browser.