mcp-server-markview

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for MarkView — a native macOS Markdown previewer.

Lets AI assistants (Claude, etc.) preview Markdown files and open them in the MarkView app directly from the conversation.

Requirements

• macOS (arm64 or x86_64)
• Node.js 18+
• MarkView.app (auto-fetched on install, or install manually from Releases)

Quick Start

Run without installing:

npx mcp-server-markview

Or install globally:

npm install -g mcp-server-markview
mcp-server-markview

The binary is downloaded automatically during installation. If the download fails (e.g. offline install), the wrapper falls back to a locally installed MarkView.app at /Applications or ~/Applications.

Claude Code Configuration

The easiest way — run once in your terminal:

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user markview -- npx mcp-server-markview

This writes to ~/.claude.json (user scope — works across all projects). Restart Claude Code after adding.

Or add manually to ~/.claude.json (permissions go in settings.json — MCP config goes here):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "markview": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-server-markview"]
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

preview_markdown

Renders a Markdown string and opens a live preview in MarkView.

| Parameter | Type | Description | |-----------|--------|---------------------------------| | content | string | Markdown source text to preview | | title | string | Optional window title |

open_file

Opens a Markdown file from disk in MarkView.

| Parameter | Type | Description | |-----------|--------|--------------------------------------| | path | string | Absolute path to the .md file |

Transport

The server uses stdio transport (JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdin/stdout), which is the standard MCP transport and compatible with all MCP clients.

How It Works

1. npm install runs scripts/postinstall.js, which downloads the prebuilt MarkView release archive from GitHub and extracts the markview-mcp-server binary.
2. The binary is placed at bin/markview-mcp-server-binary inside the package.
3. bin/mcp-server-markview (the shell wrapper registered in bin) locates the binary and execs it, preserving stdio.

Troubleshooting

Binary not found after install

Re-run the postinstall script manually:

node "$(npm root -g)/mcp-server-markview/scripts/postinstall.js"

Download failed (corporate proxy / offline)

Install MarkView.app manually from the Releases page and place it in /Applications. The wrapper will find it automatically.

Permission denied

chmod +x "$(npm root -g)/mcp-server-markview/bin/markview-mcp-server-binary"
chmod +x "$(npm root -g)/mcp-server-markview/bin/mcp-server-markview"

License

MIT — see LICENSE.