kafen-mcp

An MCP server that lets AI agents read 卡粉论坛 DocOfCard, a Discourse forum about credit cards, banking and payments.

The forum requires an account to read anything. kafen-mcp signs in with a Discourse User API key issued through the forum's own device authorization page: you approve it once in your browser, and the key is limited to the read scope, so the server can browse but never post, like, or change settings.

Tools

Post HTML is converted to compact Markdown: images link to the original upload (with the forum's AI caption as alt text when available), quotes name their source post, and oneboxes collapse to a titled link.

Related MCP server: Discourse MCP

Setup

Requires Node.js 22 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/ChrAlpha/kafen-mcp.git
cd kafen-mcp
pnpm install
pnpm build

Authorize

node dist/cli.mjs login

The command prints a link and a confirmation code. Open the link in a browser where you are logged in to the forum, check the code, and click Authorize. The key is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kafen-mcp/credentials.json (usually ~/.config/kafen-mcp/, %APPDATA%\kafen-mcp\ on Windows) with 0600 permissions.

You can skip this step and let the agent call the login tool instead; it returns the same link and code for you to open, and auth_status waits for the approval.

node dist/cli.mjs status   # which account is active
node dist/cli.mjs logout   # revoke the key on the forum and delete it locally

The key also appears under Preferences → Apps on your forum profile (/my/preferences/apps), where it can be revoked at any time.

Register with an MCP client

Claude Code:

claude mcp add kafen -- node /absolute/path/to/kafen-mcp/dist/cli.mjs

Claude Desktop, Cursor and other clients that use an mcpServers JSON block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kafen": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/kafen-mcp/dist/cli.mjs"]
    }
  }
}

Codex (~/.codex/config.toml):

[mcp_servers.kafen]
command = "node"
args = ["/absolute/path/to/kafen-mcp/dist/cli.mjs"]

Configuration

Rate limits

Discourse allows about 50 requests per minute and 4,000 per day for each User API key. The client keeps itself under 45 requests per minute, waits out short 429 responses once, and reports longer waits to the agent instead of blocking. Most tools cost one request; read_topic with a large limit and get_user cost up to three.

Development

pnpm typecheck
pnpm test                 # unit tests
pnpm build && KAFEN_E2E=1 KAFEN_BASE_URL=https://meta.discourse.org pnpm test e2e

The end-to-end suite drives the built server over stdio against a live forum. To run it against DocOfCard, log in first and pass the same KAFEN_MCP_CONFIG_DIR.

License

MIT