Outline MCP Server

An Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects AI assistants to your Outline knowledge base—search, create, and manage documents from MCP clients such as Cursor and Claude Desktop.

Features

• Documents — Search, create, read, and update Outline documents
• Collections — List and browse collections
• Resources — Expose documents and collections as MCP resources (outline://documents/{id}, outline://collections/{id})
• Tools — MCP tools for AI assistants to operate Outline via a standard interface

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21+ (for building)
• An Outline instance with API access
• API token from Outline → Settings → API Tokens

Quick Start

1. Get an Outline API token

Log in to your Outline instance → Settings → API Tokens → Create a token and copy it.

2. Build

git clone https://github.com/circleyu/outline-mcp.git
cd outline-mcp

go build -o outline-mcp-server ./cmd/server
# or
make build

3. Configure your MCP client

Add the executable path and environment variables to your MCP client config.

Cursor — Add to MCP settings (e.g. Cursor → Settings → MCP):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "outline": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/outline-mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "OUTLINE_BASE_URL": "https://app.getoutline.com",
        "OUTLINE_API_KEY": "your-api-token-here",
        "OUTLINE_MAX_RETRIES": "2",
        "LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

• Set command to the absolute path of the executable (e.g. /Users/you/outline-mcp/outline-mcp-server).
• Set OUTLINE_API_KEY to your Outline API token.
• Restart Cursor after saving.

Claude Desktop — Use the same mcpServers structure in Claude Desktop’s config.

4. Verify

After restarting the client, ask the AI to use Outline (e.g. “Search in Outline for…” or “Create a new Outline document…”).

Graceful shutdown: The server listens for SIGINT/SIGTERM and exits cleanly at the next request boundary (between JSON-RPC messages).

Project structure

outline-mcp/
├── cmd/server/          # Entry point
├── internal/
│   ├── mcp/             # MCP protocol, tools, resources
│   ├── outline/         # Outline API client
│   ├── config/          # Config loading
│   └── logger/          # Logging
├── test/                # Tests
├── docs/                # Cursor setup guide and examples
│   ├── CURSOR_SETUP.md
│   └── cursor-mcp-config.json.example
├── Makefile
├── Dockerfile
└── README.md            # This file

Documentation

Need	Document
Set up Cursor (step-by-step, config reference, FAQ, advanced)	docs/CURSOR_SETUP.md
Copy Cursor MCP config example	docs/cursor-mcp-config.json.example
Build and deploy (systemd, Docker)	DEPLOYMENT.md
Cursor setup (繁體中文)	docs/CURSOR_SETUP.zh-TW.md

Traditional Chinese: README.zh-TW.md

MCP tools

Documents

Tool	Description
outline_search_documents	Full-text search
outline_list_documents	List documents (collection, sort, pagination)
outline_create_document	Create document
outline_update_document	Update document
outline_get_document	Get document by ID
outline_delete_document	Delete document (optional permanent)
outline_archive_document	Archive document
outline_restore_document	Restore archived/deleted document
outline_move_document	Move document to another collection or parent
outline_unpublish_document	Unpublish (revert to draft)
outline_export_document	Export document as Markdown
outline_list_drafts	List current user’s drafts
outline_list_viewed	List recently viewed documents
outline_templatize_document	Create template from document

Collections

Tool	Description
outline_list_collections	List collections
outline_get_collection	Get collection by ID
outline_get_collection_documents	Get collection document tree (NavigationNode)
outline_create_collection	Create collection
outline_update_collection	Update collection
outline_delete_collection	Delete collection
outline_export_collection	Trigger collection export (async)

Shares

Tool	Description
outline_get_share	Get share (by share ID or document ID)
outline_list_shares	List share links
outline_create_share	Create share link
outline_update_share	Update share (e.g. published)
outline_revoke_share	Revoke share

Auth and users / groups

Tool	Description
outline_auth_info	Current auth info (user, team, groups)
outline_get_user	Get user by ID
outline_list_users	List team users
outline_document_users	List users with access to a document
outline_document_memberships	List document members
outline_get_group	Get group by ID
outline_list_groups	List team groups

Revisions, comments, file operations

Tool	Description
outline_get_revision	Get revision by ID
outline_list_revisions	List document revision history
outline_create_comment	Create comment
outline_get_comment	Get comment by ID
outline_list_comments	List comments (filter by document/collection)
outline_get_file_operation	Get import/export job status
outline_list_file_operations	List import/export jobs

MCP resources

• outline://documents/{id} — Document content (Markdown)
• outline://collections/{id} — Collection document tree (NavigationNode JSON)

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Default	Description
OUTLINE_BASE_URL	No*	https://app.getoutline.com	Outline instance URL
OUTLINE_API_KEY	Yes	—	Outline API token
OUTLINE_MAX_RETRIES	No	0	Number of retries for 5xx errors (0 = no retry); capped at 5
LOG_LEVEL	No	info	debug, info, warn, error

*Required when not using the default cloud URL.

Development

# Run tests
go test ./...

# Build
make build

# Build for multiple platforms
make build-all

License

MIT.

Links

• Outline
• Outline API
• Model Context Protocol