The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Rnv Color MCP listing page.
A remote MCP server for a complete color workflow: mix, convert, harmonize, and remember palettes, called in plain language by Claude (or any MCP client), and by anything else that speaks MCP.
The color logic already lived in my desktop suite: a mixer, a palette manager, a picker. Instead of rebuilding it for every new project, I lifted the engine out once and exposed it as a single server. A Claude conversation calls it today; a fashion design app will call the same backend tomorrow. Build the engine once, let both consume it.
Underneath, it's a small thesis about working with LLMs: a model is great at deciding what you want and terrible at exact arithmetic. So the model picks the tool and the intent, and the tool owns the precise values. The server resolves or it refuses; it never guesses a color.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
mix_colors | Blend up to 12 colors. Modes: rgb, hsv, lab (digital) and paint (Kubelka-Munk pigment physics), ryb (artist's wheel), cmy (subtractive). |
convert_color | Convert between hex, rgb, hsv, hsl, lab. |
generate_harmony | complementary, analogous, triadic, split-complementary, tetradic/square, monochromatic, compound. |
color_difference | Perceptual difference (Delta-E, CIEDE2000 or CIE76) between two colors. |
contrast_check | WCAG contrast ratio plus AA/AAA pass/fail for accessible text. |
transform_text | 11 exact case transforms (UPPERCASE, camelCase, snake_case, …). |
save_palette / list_palettes / get_palette | Name a palette, recall it later. Persists across restarts. |
Every color input accepts a hex (#d2bc93), a CSS name (red), an RNV brand name
(brand gold, near-black), or a saved-palette reference (Spring line, or Spring line:2
for its second swatch). Brand names win over CSS names on collision; css:gold forces the
universal one.
This is a hosted server, so there's nothing to install. In Claude: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste:
Leave auth blank, add it, then toggle it on in a chat with the + menu.
Once connected, just talk:
"Save a palette named Spring line: near-black and brand gold." "Pull my Spring line palette and give me three complementary accents for outerwear." "Mix paint-red and paint-blue like real pigment."
The first call saves; the second composes get_palette → generate_harmony; the third runs the
Kubelka-Munk paint model, so the blend darkens the way mixed pigment actually does, not the way
averaged light does.
The server implements OAuth 2.1 resource-server authentication with enforced per-tool scopes; the public endpoint runs with it disabled, so connecting by URL works with no setup.
When enabled (RNV_AUTH=1 plus a key source), the server validates bearer tokens against issuer,
audience, expiry, and signature; serves RFC 9728
protected resource metadata at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/mcp; returns a
spec-compliant WWW-Authenticate challenge on 401; and enforces two scopes: read covers the
eight read-only tools, write covers save_palette, the only tool that mutates anything. A token
without the write scope does not see save_palette in its tool list at all; out-of-scope tools
are hidden rather than refused, so nothing leaks about what exists behind a scope you lack.
Enforcement is covered by the test suite, run in CI on every push (status badge at the top of this file), spanning the token-validation matrix (missing, malformed, wrong issuer, wrong audience, expired, valid) and end-to-end scope enforcement over real HTTP. The suite mints its own keys and requires no credentials. The tests cover the auth layer; the color engine itself is not under automated test.
Moving from the self-issued development key to a real identity provider is configuration, not
code: point RNV_AUTH_JWKS_URI at the provider's JWKS endpoint and set the issuer and audience
to match.
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
RNV_AUTH | The switch. 1 / true / yes / on enables auth; unset means off. |
RNV_AUTH_JWKS_URI | A provider's JWKS endpoint. Use this or RNV_AUTH_PUBLIC_KEY. |
RNV_AUTH_PUBLIC_KEY | A static PEM public key, for development against a self-issued keypair. |
RNV_AUTH_ISSUER | Expected token issuer; also advertised as the authorization server. |
RNV_AUTH_AUDIENCE | Expected token audience. Bound to the /mcp path. |
RNV_AUTH_BASE_URL | Server base URL, without /mcp. |
With RNV_AUTH on and no key source set, the server refuses to start rather than coming up
unprotected.
Set HF_TOKEN to write palettes through to a private Hugging Face Dataset for durable storage.
The code is MIT-licensed; you're free to rebuild, host, and modify it, and I'd rather you did than didn't. What a licence can't carry is the environment.
Some capabilities depend on how a deployment is configured, not on the code alone:
HF_TOKEN and a writable Dataset. Without it, saves land in
process memory and vanish with the container.RNV_AUTH and a configured issuer. Unset, the server runs open —
which is correct for a public demo and wrong for anything else.A rebuild missing one of those usually doesn't fail loudly; it returns success and drops the result. That is worse than an outage, because an outage tells you.
So: if you're running a copy and something behaves oddly, check the environment before you check the code, and check against the canonical deployment before you file anything.
Canonical endpoint: https://rnvizion-rnv-color-mcp.hf.space/mcp
Canonical source: https://github.com/RNVizion/rnv-color-mcp
A copy served from another URL may be older, modified, or differently configured. That's fine and allowed; it just isn't this.
The tools resolve or refuse; they don't guess. A copy can only keep that promise if the ground under it was checked first.
engine/brand_vocab.py, mirrored from engine/brand.py in
RNVizion/rnv-brand and corrected when drift is
detected against it. It is carried locally on purpose: resolve_color is the hot path, and a
fetch there would have to answer what happens when it fails — fail closed and the server
refuses every color, fall back and the local copy is needed anyway, guess and the promise
above is already broken. Identifiers are local by design; the check compares values, never
names. The register and its reasoning live in BRAND_COLORS.md, in rnv-brand.fastmcp.Python · FastMCP (Streamable HTTP) · Hugging Face Spaces
(Docker) · huggingface_hub for durable palette storage.
Built by Christian "RNVizion" Smith.