manifest-mcp

The server behind the link option at readthemanifest.net — one personal connector URL that lets Claude and ChatGPT read your manifest (your portable context) and save new facts to it.

This repo exists so you don't have to take our word for what the server does. Read it. It's three small files.

Prefer to hold the files yourself, with no server at all? The same context layer as a plain repo you own is Context OS — that is the "Do it yourself" lane on the site.

How it treats your manifest

Your connector URL looks like https://readthemanifest.net/mcp/<token>. The token is a long random secret, and it does two jobs:

1. It's the address. The server hashes the token (SHA-256) and uses the hash to label your storage slot. The token itself is never written down — not in a database, not in a log we keep.

2. It's the key. Your manifest is encrypted (AES-256-GCM) with a key derived from the token (HKDF). So what sits in storage is a locked file the server cannot open on its own. It is only unlocked in the moment your AI asks for it, because the request carries the key.

No accounts, no email, no passwords. The honest consequence: lose the URL and the manifest is unrecoverable — there is nothing to reset. Export a copy anytime.

Related MCP server: CacheTank MCP Server

What "open source" does and doesn't prove

Reading this code tells you what the published server does. It cannot prove what a remote server is running — no open-source project's deployment can. If that distinction matters to you, Manifest's GitHub options keep your context entirely in your own hands, and this repo lets you run your own copy of this server (below) so the deployment is yours too.

The files

• netlify/functions/mcp.mjs — the MCP endpoint (POST /mcp/:token). Stateless JSON-RPC over HTTP. Two tools: get_manifest (read) and add_to_manifest (append one dated fact).

• netlify/functions/manifest-vault.mjs — vault management (POST /api/manifest-vault): create, replace, export, delete.

• netlify/functions/_lib/vault.mjs — the storage and crypto described above. Storage is Netlify Blobs.

Limits: manifest ≤ 150KB, note ≤ 4KB.

Run your own

Deploy this repo to any Netlify account (free tier works; Blobs is enabled automatically), then add your own https://<your-site>/mcp/<token> as a custom connector. To try it locally:

npm install
npx netlify dev --offline
# create a vault
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8888/api/manifest-vault \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"action":"create","manifest":"# Manifest\n\nHello."}'
# read it the way your AI would (use the returned token)
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8888/mcp/<token> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"get_manifest","arguments":{}}}'

(Offline local dev stores vaults as files under .netlify/local-blobs/; deployed, it's Netlify Blobs with strong read-after-write consistency.)

Usage counting

The server tallies how often its endpoints get used — an anonymous counter per event name (vault_create, mcp_read, …) plus a per-day variant, in a separate blob store. That's the whole record: no IPs, no user agents, no tokens, no manifest content. See netlify/functions/_lib/counters.mjs — it's ~30 lines.

License

MIT.