smokeball-mcp

MCP server for Smokeball — full API coverage for law firm practice management. Use Smokeball from Claude Desktop with natural language.

What you can do

• Matters — create, update, archive, tag, billing config, roles, relationships, stages

• Contacts & Leads — full CRUD, relations, tags, lead pipeline

• Tasks & Events — tasks, subtasks, task documents, calendar events, reminders

• Files & Folders — upload, download, preview, folder hierarchy, version history

• Billing — fees (time entries), expenses, invoices, activity codes, bank accounts, trust accounting

• Portals — client portal tasks and messages

• Document generation — layout designs, merge workflows, matter items

• Administration — staff, users, authorization groups/policies, plugins, webhooks, notifications

Related MCP server: filevine-mcp

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

• Claude Desktop (or any MCP-compatible client)

• Smokeball partner credentials (Client ID, Client Secret, API Key)

Smokeball partner access: API credentials are issued through the Smokeball partner/developer program. Contact your Smokeball account representative to request API access.

Installation

pip install smokeball-mcp

Setup

Run the guided OAuth setup:

smokeball-mcp-setup

This will:

1. Ask for your region (US / AU / UK)

2. Ask for your Client ID, Client Secret, and API Key

3. Open the browser for Smokeball authorization

4. Save credentials to ~/.smokeball-mcp/

Verify the connection:

smokeball-mcp-verify

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "smokeball": {
      "command": "smokeball-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. Smokeball tools will appear automatically.

Regions

Region is set during setup and stored securely (OS keyring or ~/.smokeball-mcp/.env fallback).

Credential storage

By default credentials are stored in your operating system's native secret store via the cross-platform keyring library:

Secrets are saved under the service name smokeball-mcp. Nothing is written to disk in clear text.

File fallback. On a host with no keyring backend (e.g. a headless Linux box without Secret Service), or if you set SMOKEBALL_MCP_USE_KEYRING=0, credentials fall back to a ~/.smokeball-mcp/.env file with 0600 permissions.

Read order. Credentials resolve in the order OS keyring → process environment → .env file. So a rotated secret in the keyring always wins, and a SMOKEBALL_CLIENT_ID / SMOKEBALL_API_KEY exported in your shell overrides the file fallback without touching the keyring.

Authentication

Smokeball uses two credential layers:

• OAuth 2.0 Bearer token — user identity, obtained via auth code flow

• x-api-key header — app/partner identity, static key from Smokeball partner portal

Both are required for every API call. The setup wizard handles both.

Example usage in Claude

"List my open matters"

"Create a task on matter abc-123 due next Friday — prepare hearing brief"

"Add a fee entry for 2.5 hours on the Johnson matter, description: drafted motion to dismiss"

"Show me all trust account transactions for the Smith matter"

"Send a portal message to the client on matter xyz-456 — documents are ready for review"

Tools

Full coverage across 30 Smokeball API resource categories — 189 tools total.

License

MIT