Pinboard MCP Server

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 format
end_date (optional): end date in yyyy-mm-dd format
tags (optional): comma-separated tags to filter by
limit (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 bookmark
title (required): bookmark title
description (optional): extended description
tags (optional): comma-separated tags
private (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 update
title (optional): new title
description (optional): new description
tags (optional): new tags (replaces existing)
private (optional): change privacy setting
toread (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 rename
new_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" ] } } }