tela-mcp

A thin stdio↔HTTP proxy to a Tela instance's built-in MCP server.

As of v0.7, the MCP server lives inside the Tela backend at {TELA_BASE_URL}/api/mcp (Streamable HTTP, spec-compliant). This npm package no longer implements any tools itself — it's a dumb pipe that forwards the entire MCP protocol (tools, resources, prompts, notifications) over stdio to that endpoint, injecting your personal access token as a bearer header. Because it holds no tool knowledge, the backend's MCP surface can grow without this package ever changing — there is no second implementation to drift.

Most hosts don't need this package

Modern MCP hosts speak Streamable HTTP transport directly — point them at the endpoint and skip the proxy entirely:

# Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http tela https://telawiki.com/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer tela_pat_..."

Cursor, VS Code, Zed, and the Anthropic Messages API mcp_servers connector likewise accept a URL + bearer header. Use this npm package only for stdio-only hosts that can't speak HTTP transport.

Using the proxy (stdio-only hosts)

Add to your .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tela": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tela-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "TELA_BASE_URL": "https://telawiki.com",
        "TELA_API_KEY": "tela_pat_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Var	Purpose
TELA_BASE_URL	Origin of the Tela instance (e.g. https://telawiki.com or http://localhost:8780). The proxy connects to {TELA_BASE_URL}/api/mcp.
TELA_API_KEY	Personal access token (tela_pat_…), forwarded as Authorization: Bearer. Create one in Settings → API Keys.

Both must be set at spawn time, or the process exits non-zero before the MCP handshake.

Tool & resource catalog

The tools (list_spaces, get_page, search, semantic_search, create_page, move_page, add_comment, …), the tela://page/{id} / tela://space/{id} resources, and the read/write/admin scope model are all defined and documented in the backend, not here. Scope and per-space restrictions are enforced server-side; failures arrive as the usual {error, code, status} envelope in the tool result. See the project Showcase: https://telawiki.com/spaces/1/pages/19.

Auth

This package authenticates with a static personal access token (PAT), which works with the Messages API connector and any host that accepts a bearer header. The OAuth "Connect" flow used by the Claude.ai / ChatGPT consumer apps is a separate, server-side capability (it does not involve this package).

Develop

cd mcp
npm install
npm run build            # tsc → dist/server.js
npm run test:integration # live proxy↔backend E2E (needs a running backend; use `make test-mcp-integration` from the repo root)

The proxy is ~40 lines over the official @modelcontextprotocol/sdk transports. Exhaustive per-tool coverage lives in the Go backend's e2e MCP tests (backend/internal/api/mcp_test.go).

License

AGPL-3.0-only.