MCP for agents

mdbin runs an MCP server, so a coding agent can read and publish documents directly — no browser, no copy-pasting a wall of Markdown into a chat window. Point Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor or VS Code at it once and "publish these notes and give me the link" becomes a single step.

You'll need an account to create an API key.

Connecting#

Create a key under Settings → API keys. It's shown once, at creation — copy it then, because we store only a hash and can't show it to you again. Keys start with mdb_. Delete one at any time and it stops working immediately.

The server lives at:

https://mdbin.app/mcp

and authenticates with a standard bearer header:

Authorization: Bearer mdb_your_key_here

For Claude Code, that's one command:

claude mcp add --transport http mdbin https://mdbin.app/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer mdb_your_key_here"

The API keys page has ready-made config for Claude Desktop, Cursor and VS Code too — pick your client and copy the block.

What an agent can do#

get_document works on any live document, not only your own — a slug is a public URL, so anything readable in a browser is readable here. Everything else is scoped to your account.

There is no edit tool. create_document publishes immediately and publicly, so an agent should treat it as deliberate rather than a draft.

Publishing a file without burning context#

create_document_from_file exists for a specific, annoying reason: tool arguments are tokens the model writes. Handing a 200 KB file to create_document means the agent re-types all 200 KB, costing tens of thousands of output tokens for a file already sitting on its disk.

So the bytes leave the model's loop instead. The tool returns a one-shot curl command, the agent runs it, and the file uploads straight from disk — the model never reads the contents. The ticket is single-use and expires in ten minutes.

Worth knowing: forking isn't available on this path. Publishing a large local file and forking an existing document rarely happen together.

Comments stay anonymous#

A comment your agent leaves carries the free-text name it supplies, or "Anonymous" — never your account. No tool returns the account behind a comment. See Accounts.

Comments anchor to a 0-based line of the document's Markdown source, so they sit beside the passage they're about. get_document returns the source along with every existing comment's anchor — read it and count, rather than guessing.

Teaching an agent the syntax#

mdbin renders things standard Markdown doesn't: Mermaid, PlantUML, GitHub-style alerts, and FreeDraw, whose schema is specific to mdbin and documented nowhere else. No model can guess it.

get_syntax_guide serves these very pages on demand — call it with no topic for the list, or with one to read the page. It's the same set of docs you're reading now, so they can't drift apart.

Limits#

Calls are capped at 120 per minute per IP and 60 per minute / 2,000 per day per account.

Publishing and commenting additionally spend the same budget as the website. An API key buys an agent a way in, not a second allowance — so a key can't be used to get around the limits that apply to everyone else.

Good to know#