@shck-dev/notion-mcp

Notion MCP Server — search, export, and import pages as markdown

No workspace admin. No OAuth. No page sharing.
Just paste 3 values from your browser and go.

Blog Post | GitHub | npm

Features

• Search — full-text search across your entire workspace
• Export — download any page as clean markdown (headings, lists, to-do, code blocks, tables, links, images with viewable URLs)
• Import — write markdown back to Notion pages (replaces content), from a string or local file
• Append — add markdown to the end of a page without touching existing content
• Create — spin up new child pages, optionally prefilled from a markdown string or file
• Images — upload a local image to a page, or reference an external URL
• Comments — list open discussions, add new comments, reply to threads
• One-command setup — npx @shck-dev/notion-mcp init: paste a browser "Copy as cURL" and it extracts + saves your credentials
• Prompts & resources — a notion_setup prompt and a notion://guide resource for in-client onboarding
• Zero setup friction — uses the same internal API as the Notion web app; if you can see it in your browser, this server can access it

Tools

| Tool | Description | |------|-------------| | notion_search | Full-text search across all pages in your workspace | | notion_export_page | Export any Notion page as markdown; image links resolve to viewable CDN URLs (pass image_dir to download images locally instead) | | notion_import_page | Write markdown to a Notion page — replaces all existing content | | notion_import_page_from_file | Write a local .md file to a page — replaces all content | | notion_append_to_page | Append markdown to the end of a page (non-destructive) | | notion_append_to_page_from_file | Append a local .md file to the end of a page (non-destructive) | | notion_create_page | Create a new sub-page, optionally prefilled with markdown | | notion_create_page_from_file | Create a new sub-page from a local .md file | | notion_add_image | Append an image to the end of a page — local file is uploaded to Notion, http(s) URL is referenced as-is | | notion_list_comments | List open discussion threads on a page | | notion_add_comment | Start a new discussion — inline (anchored to text) or block-level | | notion_reply_comment | Reply to an existing discussion thread | | notion_init | Paste a browser "Copy as cURL" to extract & save credentials |

Why not the official Notion API?

| | This MCP server | Official Notion API | |---|----------|-------------------| | Setup | Paste 3 values from DevTools | Create integration, get admin approval, share pages | | Page access | Everything you can see | Only explicitly shared pages | | Markdown | Bidirectional (export + import) | Read-only blocks API | | Auth | Cookie (token_v2) | OAuth / integration token |

Trade-off: The internal API is undocumented and may change. Token expires periodically (re-grab from browser).

Quick start

Easiest: interactive setup

npx @shck-dev/notion-mcp init

Open Notion in Chrome → DevTools (F12) → Network → click any request to notion.so/api/v3/… → right-click → Copy as cURL, then paste it and press Ctrl-D. Your token, user id, and workspace id are extracted and saved to ~/.notion-mcp/config.json. Then register the server — no env block needed:

claude mcp add notion -- npx @shck-dev/notion-mcp

Prefer to set the three values by hand? Steps below.

1. Get credentials from your browser

1. Open notion.so in Chrome
2. Press F12 → Application → Cookies → www.notion.so
3. Copy the token_v2 cookie value → NOTION_TOKEN
4. Press F12 → Network tab, do any action in Notion
5. Find a POST request to api/v3/*, click it
6. From Request Headers: copy x-notion-active-user-header → NOTION_USER_ID
7. From Request Body (Payload): find spaceId → NOTION_SPACE_ID

2. Configure your MCP client

Claude Code

claude mcp add notion -- env NOTION_TOKEN=your_token NOTION_USER_ID=your_user_id NOTION_SPACE_ID=your_space_id npx @shck-dev/notion-mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor / any MCP client

Add to your MCP config (claude_desktop_config.json, .cursor/mcp.json, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notion": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@shck-dev/notion-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "NOTION_TOKEN": "your_token_v2_value",
        "NOTION_USER_ID": "your_user_id",
        "NOTION_SPACE_ID": "your_space_id"
      }
    }
  }
}

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18 (for npx) — or Bun. The published server is compiled to node-compatible JS, so Bun is no longer required to run it.

Limitations

• Internal API — undocumented, may break with Notion updates
• Token expiry — token_v2 expires periodically; re-grab from browser when auth fails
• Databases — database/collection pages don't export rows yet; sub-pages render as links and such pages return an explanatory note instead of empty output
• Block granularity — import replaces all content, append adds to the end (no in-place editing of individual blocks)
• Lossy markdown — some complex formatting may simplify during conversion (e.g. nested lists flatten on import)
• External images — http(s) image URLs added via notion_add_image (or embedded in markdown) are referenced as-is and not re-uploaded to Notion

License

MIT