I've been using Pinboard for years to save bookmarks. I've recently been working on a project to explore business operations data from Claude Desktop with an MCP server. Inspired by this, I've been experimenting with ideas for personal productivity tools to build for myself.
This MCP server implements a minimal set of tools for interacting with the pinboard api. There are tools to get/add/update bookmarks, list/rename tags, and get tag suggestions.
Once set up, you can make queries like:
- "show me all my bookmarks from december 2023"
- "what were the main topics i was bookmarking last month?"
- "find bookmarks tagged with 'python' from this year"
- "analyze my bookmarking patterns over the last few weeks"
setup
this mcp server runs in a docker container for use with claude desktop.
get the docker image
docker pull ghcr.io/vicgarcia/pinboard-mcp:latest
get your pinboard api token
go to pinboard settings and copy your api token (format: username:1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF)
configure claude desktop
add this to your claude desktop mcp settings:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pinboard": {
"command": "docker",
"args": [
"run", "-i", "--rm",
"-e", "PINBOARD_TOKEN=your-username:your-api-token",
"ghcr.io/vicgarcia/pinboard-mcp:latest"
]
}
}
}
replace your-username:your-api-token with your actual pinboard token
features
this mcp server exposes tools to interact with the pinboard api.
get_bookmarks
retrieve bookmarks within a date range
parameters:
start_date(optional): start date in yyyy-mm-dd formatend_date(optional): end date in yyyy-mm-dd formattags(optional): comma-separated tags to filter bylimit(optional): max bookmarks to return (default: 200, max: 500)
constraints:
- date range cannot exceed 90 days
- rate limited to respect pinboard's 3-second api limit
example usage in claude:
"get my bookmarks from last week with the tag 'python'"
add_bookmark
create a new bookmark
parameters:
url(required): web address to bookmarktitle(required): bookmark titledescription(optional): extended descriptiontags(optional): comma-separated tagsprivate(optional): true for private, false for public (default: false)toread(optional): mark as to-read (default: false)
example usage in claude:
"bookmark https://example.com with title 'interesting article' and tags 'research, ai'"
update_bookmark
update an existing bookmark by url
parameters:
url(required): url of bookmark to updatetitle(optional): new titledescription(optional): new descriptiontags(optional): new tags (replaces existing)private(optional): change privacy settingtoread(optional): change to-read status
example usage in claude:
"update the bookmark for https://example.com to add the tag 'important'"
get_tags
retrieve all tags with usage counts
returns:
- list of all tags sorted by usage count (descending)
- each tag includes name and count of bookmarks using it
example usage in claude:
"show me all my tags and how often i use them"
rename_tag
rename a tag across all bookmarks
parameters:
old_tag(required): existing tag name to renamenew_tag(required): new tag name
validation:
- both tags must be non-empty
- tags are normalized to lowercase
- old and new tags cannot be identical
example usage in claude:
"rename the tag 'ppython' to 'python'"
suggest_tags
get suggested tags for a url from pinboard
parameters:
url(required): web address to get tag suggestions for
returns:
- popular tags: site-wide tags commonly used by others for this url
- recommended tags: personalized suggestions based on your tagging history
- counts for both popular and recommended tags
example usage in claude:
"suggest tags for https://example.com/article" "what tags should i use for bookmarking https://github.com/repo/project"
development
if you want to work on this locally:
git clone https://github.com/vicgarcia/pinboard-mcp
cd pinboard-mcp
# install dependencies
pip install -e .
project structure
src/
pinboard_mcp/
__init__.py # package marker
server.py # mcp tools implementation + run() entry point
pinboard.py # pinboard api client and utilities
utils.py # validation helpers
building docker image locally
docker build -t pinboard-mcp:local .
to use the local build in claude desktop, update your mcp settings to use pinboard-mcp:local instead of ghcr.io/vicgarcia/pinboard-mcp:latest:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pinboard": {
"command": "docker",
"args": [
"run", "-i", "--rm",
"-e", "PINBOARD_TOKEN=your-username:your-api-token",
"pinboard-mcp:local"
]
}
}
}