Made Good Designs — Free Design Inspiration MCP Server

A free, public MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets any AI assistant — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Cline — search Made Good Designs' curated design-reference library and cite real sources instead of describing styles from memory.

What it can search

• 40,000+ brand, typography and design references — tagged by style, theme, colour palette (HEX) and industry.

• 4,000+ vintage corporate annual-report covers (1950s–90s) — by company, country, decade, industry and designer.

• ~1,000 public-domain / CC0 museum artworks chosen for designers (The Met, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art) — posters, ukiyo-e, lettering, ornament, Art Nouveau.

Two endpoints:

• Transport: Streamable HTTP (remote MCP server), JSON-RPC 2.0 (initialize, tools/list, tools/call, ping)

• Cost: free. No API key.

• Setup guide: https://madegooddesigns.com/design-mcp-server/

MCP tools

Public (/mcp and /mcp/boards)

Personal (/mcp/boards only, after sign-in)

Every result includes source attribution back to madegooddesigns.com, descriptive tags, a colour palette (HEX) and an absolute image URL. Boards are the same ones you see in the web gallery's Boards tab; manage connected apps at https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/account/connected-apps.

Related MCP server: taste-mcp

Connect

Claude / Claude Desktop

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp (or /mcp/boards to sync your boards — you'll be asked to sign in with Google).

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http mgd-inspiration https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp
# personal boards:
claude mcp add --transport http mgd-boards https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp/boards   # then /mcp to sign in

JSON config (Cursor, Cline and other MCP clients)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mgd-inspiration": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Verify with the MCP SDK inspector

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
# → connect to https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp
# → run tools/list, then call search_design_inspiration({ "query": "serif branding", "limit": 3 })

Raw JSON-RPC (MCP over Streamable HTTP)

curl -s https://madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'

Authentication for /mcp/boards

Spec-compliant MCP authorization (2025-06-18): the Worker is both the OAuth 2.1 authorization server and the resource server. PKCE (S256) required, dynamic client registration (RFC 7591), protected-resource metadata (RFC 9728), authorization-server metadata (RFC 8414), audience-bound tokens (RFC 8707), refresh-token rotation with replay detection, revocation (RFC 7009). Tokens are stored only as SHA-256 hashes. Implementation: src/oauth.js; tests: run_local_tests.sh / test_mcp_oauth.py.

Privacy: both endpoints log each tool call (tool name, query, time, IP, user agent) to understand usage and improve the library. Conversations are never sent to the server — only the tool requests.

How the MCP server is implemented

The MCP handler lives in src/index.js (mcpHandler + MCP_TOOLS). It implements the Model Context Protocol over Streamable HTTP: initialize (echoing the client's protocolVersion and advertising tools), tools/list, tools/call, and ping, with CORS enabled and notifications acknowledged. Tool calls query the same Cloudflare D1 database that backs the public gallery, so MCP clients and human visitors see the same curated corpus.

The rest of the project (web gallery + API)

The same Cloudflare Worker also powers a human web gallery — one data layer, two front doors.

Architecture

• Worker (src/index.js) — MCP server + JSON API + serves the gallery & curation UIs + serves images from R2.

• D1 (schema.sql) — items (+ boards/saves/users).

• R2 — image storage (zero egress fees).

• NVIDIA Build (NIM) — best-effort vision auto-tagging + description on ingest (batch, ≈ $0). Saves never block on it.

HTTP endpoints

Supports an optional BASE_PATH var to mount at madegooddesigns.com/inspiration/ via a Cloudflare route.

Deploy / run — see DEPLOY.md. TL;DR: wrangler login → create D1 + R2 → apply schema.sql → set NVIDIA_API_KEY + ADMIN_TOKEN secrets → wrangler deploy.

Design decisions — niche = typography/brand design · attribution = store URL, display source as plain text (no outbound link, anti-spam) · stack = Cloudflare serverless.

Built by Made Good Designs · a privacy-first, ad-free design resource.