MCP integration

Netdexperts ships a stdio MCP server with 238 typed tools wrapping the compact /r/{short} API — board discovery, item CRUD, typed cell writes, the full search_items grammar, views, automations, files. Once configured, your LLM client can read and write boards natively.

Heads-up: there is no hosted HTTP MCP endpoint yet — https://api.netdexperts.com/mcp does not exist. The MCP server runs as a local stdio process (the standard transport for Claude Desktop / Claude Code / Cursor). A hosted remote-MCP endpoint is on the roadmap.

What MCP is

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is Anthropic’s open standard for connecting LLMs to external tools and data sources. Tested clients include:

• Claude Code — picks the server up from a .mcp.json in your project
• Claude Desktop (Anthropic) — Settings > Developer > MCP Servers
• Cursor — native MCP support since v0.45
• Any client that implements the stdio MCP spec

Required configuration

The server lives in the Netdexperts repo at backend/mcp_server/ and runs with python -m backend.mcp_server. Point your client at it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "netdex": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "backend.mcp_server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/netdexpert",
      "env": {
        "NETDEX_BASE_URL": "https://api.netdexperts.com",
        "NETDEX_VAULT_KEY": "YOUR_API_AGENT_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

• NETDEX_BASE_URL — the API your tools talk to. Defaults to the cloud API; point it at your own instance when self-hosting.
• NETDEX_VAULT_KEY — the API-agent key (sent as X-Vault-Key). For single-tenant self-host (NETDEX_MODE=single) auth is short-circuited and you can omit it. Cloud API-key self-service UI is not available yet — self-hosting is the supported path today.

Test it works

The discovery endpoints are public; you can sanity-check the API surface before wiring MCP:

curl -s https://api.netdexperts.com/api/sitemap | head -20
curl -s https://api.netdexperts.com/api/help

After MCP is configured, open your LLM client and ask it to list your boards. It should call list_boards, return a few short_ids, and offer to dive in.

What the MCP server exposes

The server respects tenant scoping — cross-tenant reads return 404, not 403, even via MCP. The same security guarantees apply to API and MCP equally.

A few of the 238 tools (the docstrings in backend/mcp_server/server.py are the full map):

• list_boards — discover boards in your tenant
• get_board_schema(board_id) — columns, groups, views for a board
• list_items(board_id) / get_item(board_id, item_id) — read items
• get_cell / set_value — read or write one cell (typed parameters: value_text / value_number / value_date / value_json)
• search_items(query) — the full grammar: col:val, ranges, OR, NOT, projection, sort, cross-board
• create_item(board_id, name, …) — append an item
• board_agg(board_id, group_by, agg) — count / sum / avg aggregation

Next steps

• Compact API reference: api.netdexperts.com/api/help
• Conventions (status labels, ID system, secret handling): /api/conventions
• Getting started if you haven’t signed up yet