sharedoc-mcp

Agent-generated Markdown → a link you can hand to anyone. GitHub gists today, your own server tomorrow.

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An MCP stdio server — works in Claude Code, Codex CLI, and any MCP client — that gives your agent 9 tools to publish, update, search, and revoke shareable documents. Two pluggable backends behind one interface: gist (zero setup, rides your logged-in gh CLI) and selfhost (SQLite on your machine, passwords, enforced expiry).

When a backend can't honor a parameter (e.g. password on gist), it returns a clear error instead of silently ignoring it.

Why?

AI agents produce Markdown constantly — reports, research digests, meeting notes. Getting that to another human usually means copy-pasting walls of text into a chat window.

Without sharedoc-mcp                  With sharedoc-mcp
────────────────────                  ─────────────────
copy a wall of text into chat         "share this as a doc"
paste again for each person           one link for everyone
content lives in chat scroll          revoke / extend / append later
"can you password it?"  …no           selfhost backend: bcrypt + expiry

Where do those Markdown digests come from? Often another skill — e.g. audio-tldr turns videos and podcasts into Markdown digests; sharedoc-mcp turns them into links.

Features

• ✓ 9 MCP tools: create / append / update content / extend / reset password / rename / revoke / delete / search
• ✓ sharedoc-mcp serve daemon mode — selfhost links keep working after your MCP client closes
• ✓ Content search: find old share links by what's in them, not just the title
• ✓ GET /healthz — identity-aware health probe for external monitoring / restart automation
• ✓ Two backends, one interface — switch with a single env var, tool schemas stay identical
• ✓ Gist backend (default): secret gists via your logged-in gh CLI — no tokens to manage, nothing new to host
• ✓ Selfhost backend: docs stay on your machine (SQLite via built-in node:sqlite — zero native modules)
• ✓ Server-verified passwords (bcrypt) with rate-limited attempts — 5/minute, HTTP 429, counters persisted in SQLite so a restart can't reset them (selfhost)
• ✓ Enforced expiry (410) and revoke with a 7-day content-purge grace (selfhost); lazy expiry cleanup (gist)
• ✓ Markdown rendered through marked + sanitize-html — scripts, event handlers, and javascript: URLs in shared content are stripped
• ✓ Viewer binds 127.0.0.1 only, answers with a strict security-header set (CSP default-src 'none', nosniff, DENY framing, no-referrer, no-store) — exposure is a tunnel you control (recipes below)
• ✓ Local index for search_shared_docs + create dedup (identical unprotected retries within 5 min return the same URL; a retry that adds a password/expiry always creates a new doc)
• ✓ search_shared_docs supports offset pagination (hasMore in the response) and, on selfhost, view stats (viewCount/lastViewedAt, counted on a successful render only)
• ✓ Docker one-liner for the standalone serve daemon, defaults to the same 127.0.0.1-only binding as everywhere else
• ✓ Two MCP clients can share one data dir: SQLite WAL + busy timeout, graceful port sharing
• ✓ 110 offline tests; npm test passes on a clean checkout

Install

Requires Node.js ≥ 22.13.0. Gist backend additionally needs GitHub CLI logged in (gh auth login).

Option A — Claude Code (one line):

claude mcp add sharedoc --scope user -- npx -y sharedoc-mcp@^2

Option B — Codex CLI (~/.codex/config.toml):

[mcp_servers.sharedoc]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "sharedoc-mcp@^2"]

Option C — Cursor (one click): hit Add to Cursor, or merge into ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "sharedoc": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "sharedoc-mcp@^2"] } } }

Option D — VS Code (one click): hit Install in VS Code, or from a terminal:

code --add-mcp '{"name":"sharedoc","command":"npx","args":["-y","sharedoc-mcp@^2"]}'

Option E — any other MCP client: run npx -y sharedoc-mcp@^2 as a stdio server.

Why @^2? A bare npx -y sharedoc-mcp resolves the latest published version on every cold start — a future 3.0 could change behavior (or remove a tool) under you without warning. @^2 follows 2.x fixes but never crosses a breaking major; pin an exact version (@2.2.0) if you want zero drift.

Pick your backend

Gist quickstart

Ask your agent to "share this as a doc" — it calls create_shared_doc and returns a secret gist URL. Secret gists are not listed publicly and the URL is unguessable, but anyone who has the link can read it — that's the whole security model of this backend. Need passwords? Use selfhost.

A local index (~/.config/sharedoc-mcp/index.json) tracks what you've shared, powering search and expiry cleanup. Expiry here is lazy: expired gists are deleted the next time any tool runs, not at the exact expiry moment.

Selfhost quickstart

claude mcp add sharedoc --scope user --env SHAREDOC_BACKEND=selfhost -- npx -y sharedoc-mcp@^2

Docs live in SQLite at ~/.local/share/sharedoc-mcp/; a viewer serves them at http://127.0.0.1:8377. To share beyond your machine, put a tunnel in front and set SHAREDOC_PUBLIC_URL:

Links that outlive your editor: in MCP mode the viewer dies with the MCP client — close Claude Code and selfhost links stop answering until the next session (data is safe in SQLite). Run the standalone daemon to keep links alive around the clock:

Terminal

Copy

npx -y sharedoc-mcp@^2 serve   # viewer only, same DB — keep it running via launchd/systemd/tmux (Windows: Task Scheduler or NSSM)

MCP clients detect the daemon already owns the port and simply use it.

When to set this up: the moment you first hand a link to someone else — do it together with your tunnel (both should be long-running, e.g. under launchd/systemd). Until then the MCP-mode viewer is enough, and gist-backend users never need it.

Own a domain? Cloudflare named tunnel, step by step

A branded, stable share URL like https://docs.example.com/docs/<uuid> — TLS handled by Cloudflare, works from behind NAT:

# one-time setup (domain already added to Cloudflare — the free plan is enough)
cloudflared tunnel login
cloudflared tunnel create sharedoc
cloudflared tunnel route dns sharedoc docs.example.com

~/.cloudflared/config.yml: