Clipboard MCP: Give Your AI a Clipboard 📋

Your AI assistant can generate code, write prose, and answer complex questions. But when it comes to placing that output directly where you need it—on your system clipboard—it hits a wall.

Clipboard MCP bridges that gap.

It's a simple, secure tool that exposes a single capability to your AI: copying text to your clipboard. Now, your assistant can not only generate a code snippet but also place it on your clipboard, ready for you to paste into your editor, all in one seamless step.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
  • Method 1: Desktop Extension
  • Method 2: Manual JSON Configuration
• Usage
  • Example Prompts
  • Tool Reference: clipboard
  • Error Handling
• Development & Contributing

Features

• Simple & Secure: Exposes a single, safe clipboard tool.
• Cross-Platform: Works wherever Node.js and clipboardy are supported.
• Seamless Integration: Allows AI assistants to copy text to the user's clipboard with a simple command.
• Structured Output: Returns a clear JSON object indicating success or failure.

Installation

You can install Clipboard MCP in two ways, depending on your preference and client application.

Method 1: Desktop Extension

This is the easiest way to get started. It allows for one-click installation in compatible clients like Claude Code.

1. Download the latest clipboard-mcp.dxt file from the Releases page.
2. Open the .dxt file with your client application. The client will handle the rest.

Method 2: Manual JSON Configuration

This method uses npx to download and run the package on-demand. It's ideal for command-line usage or for developers who prefer not to install the extension directly.

To use this method, add the following JSON to your client's configuration file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clipboard": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "clipboard-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Configuration File Locations:

• For Claude Desktop: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• For Gemini CLI: ~/.gemini/settings.json
• For Cursor IDE: Your user settings.json file.

Usage

Once integrated, you can use prompts like these with your AI assistant.

Example Prompts

Here are a few examples of how you can use Clipboard MCP.

"Generate a UUID and copy it to my clipboard."

"Write a Python function to calculate the factorial of a number and copy it to my clipboard."

"What's the git command to squash the last 3 commits? Copy the command to my clipboard."

Tool Reference: clipboard

| Name | Type | Required | Description | |--------|----------|----------|-----------------------------------------| | text | string | Yes | The text to copy to the user's clipboard. |

Returns: A JSON object indicating success or failure.

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "Text successfully copied to clipboard."
}

Error Handling

If the tool encounters an error, it will return a JSON object with the isError flag set to true and a descriptive error message.

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "Failed to copy to clipboard: [error details]"
}

Development & Contributing

To contribute to this project:

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/gourraguis/clipboard-mcp.git
2. Install dependencies: cd clipboard-mcp && npm install
3. Build the project: npm run build
4. To test your local build, use the MCP Inspector:

   npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/main.js