clio-mcp

A standalone, firm-controlled MCP server that drives Clio matters and documents from Claude Desktop.

Install (one-click, recommended)

1. Download ClioMCP.mcpb.

2. In Claude Desktop: Settings → Extensions → Install Extension… → pick the file.

3. Enter your Clio OAuth Client ID and Client Secret (region defaults to us) in the form. Secrets are stored in your OS keychain.

4. Just ask Claude to use Clio — e.g. "find my open matters." The first request opens Clio's consent page in your browser; approve it and the request completes. No terminal, no separate login.

First-time auth: if approval takes more than ~55s, Claude will say "approve in your browser, then ask again" — the connection finishes in the background and your next request works.

Tool sets

Clio MCP ships ~46 tools across seven groups: core (matters/contacts/documents), billing (time/expense + bills), calendar, tasks, comms (communications + notes), fields (custom fields), and lookups (practice areas/users/activity descriptions).

By default all are enabled. To scope a deployment to a subset, set the Tool sets field (or CLIO_TOOLSETS) to a comma list, e.g. core,billing,calendar. Unknown names are ignored; an empty result falls back to core.

Related MCP server: Clio Manage MCP

Manual setup (dev / headless)

1. Register one OAuth app in your firm's Clio developer account (US region). Note the client key and secret. Set the redirect URI to http://127.0.0.1:9991/callback (loopback login) — and additionally Clio's oauth/approval page if you use --manual.

2. Create ~/.clio-mcp/config.json:

   { "region": "us", "clientId": "<clio app key>", "clientSecret": "<clio app secret>" }

3. Install and build:

   npm install && npm run build

4. Authorize as yourself:

   node dist/cli.js login          # opens a browser (loopback)
   # or, on a locked-down machine:
   node dist/cli.js login --manual # paste the code from Clio's approval page

Claude Desktop config

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clio": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/ClioMCP/dist/cli.js", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

What it can do (Phase 1)

Matters: find, get, create, update (incl. close), add note, create task. Contacts: find, get, create. Documents: browse, get, download, upload, create folder. Destructive ops (rename/new-version, move, delete document, delete folder) require a two-step confirmation.

Controls

• Per-user OAuth; refresh token encrypted at rest (OS keychain or AES-256-GCM file).

• Every tool call is recorded in ~/.clio-mcp/audit.log (JSONL) — never tokens or document contents.

• Destructive actions return a preview + confirm_token first and only execute when the token is echoed back.

• Rate-limit aware (serialized queue honoring Clio's headers).

Phase 2 (Delegant)

The governance seam (src/governance/seam.ts) is the swap point: replace localGuard with a delegant implementation to get firm-wide policy, human approval gates, and tamper-evident central audit — no tool rewrites.