edge-history-mcp

A stdio Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that exposes Microsoft Edge browsing history across multiple profiles.

It lets an MCP client:

• List Edge profiles by their friendly names.

• Fetch history for a given day for a given profile, returning one entry per page visit with timestamp, URL, title, and other metadata.

• Summarize a day's browsing hour by hour as domains only, without exposing full URLs.

The server only reads Edge data and never modifies it. Because Edge keeps the live History database locked while running, the server copies it (together with any rollback-journal/WAL sidecar files) to a private temporary directory and reads the copy — so it works even while Edge is open, and SQLite can recover a consistent snapshot if the copy was taken mid-write.

Quick start (GitHub Copilot CLI)

You don't need to clone this repo. With uv installed, register the server in your user config with a single command — uvx builds and runs it on demand straight from GitHub:

copilot mcp add edge-history -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/adrianba/edge-browser-mcp edge-history-mcp

Then, from any directory:

copilot mcp list      # edge-history should appear under User servers
copilot              # start a session and ask it to use the edge-history tools

The source/repo is edge-browser-mcp and the command/package is edge-history-mcp — both appear in the command above (--from …edge-browser-mcp is the source, the trailing edge-history-mcp is the command to run).

To pin to a released version (recommended for stability), append a tag:

copilot mcp add edge-history -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/adrianba/edge-browser-mcp@v0.2.1 edge-history-mcp

Related MCP server: Chrome Debug MCP Server

Requirements

• Windows with Microsoft Edge installed.

• uv (Python is managed by uv; no manual venv needed).

Tools

list_profiles()

Lists available Edge browsing profiles. Returns a list of objects:

Use name (or directory) as the profile argument to get_history.

get_history(profile, date, start_time=None, end_time=None, limit=10000, offset=0)

Returns a page of per-visit history entries for a profile on a single day. A busy day can hold thousands of visits, so the result is paginated and can be narrowed to an intra-day time window.

• profile — friendly name from list_profiles, or a directory id.

• date — YYYY-MM-DD. Day boundaries are interpreted in the local machine timezone (DST-aware). The server determines the local timezone from the OS (via tzlocal) rather than relying on Python's process-local timezone, which can be incorrect in some Windows/Scout environments. Override with the EDGE_HISTORY_TIMEZONE environment variable (IANA name, e.g. America/Los_Angeles).

• start_time — optional lower bound within the day, HH:MM (24-hour, local). Defaults to the start of the day.

• end_time — optional upper bound within the day, HH:MM (local, exclusive). Defaults to the end of the day. Must be later than start_time.

• limit — optional maximum number of entries to return per page (default 10000, capped at 50000; non-positive values fall back to the default).

• offset — optional number of entries to skip from the start of the window, for paging through large results (default 0).

The result is an object:

Each entry in entries contains:

Fetching part of a day. Pass start_time/end_time to pull a narrow window instead of the whole day, e.g. get_history("Work", "2024-03-15", start_time="09:00", end_time="10:00").

Paging through a large day. Start with offset=0; if the result has has_more=true, call again with offset=next_offset until has_more is false.

Privacy note. get_history returns URLs verbatim, and URLs can embed auth tokens, session ids, password-reset links or pre-signed URLs. For questions like "what did I browse today?", prefer get_history_summary below and only reach for get_history when specific URLs or titles are needed.

get_history_summary(profile, date, start_time=None, end_time=None, group_by="hour", limit=10000, offset=0, include_titles=True, max_titles_per_site=3)

Returns an aggregated, privacy-preserving view of the same window as get_history: visits grouped into local-time hour buckets with domains only, plus a small sample of page titles per domain for context.

It intentionally returns no full URLs, query strings or fragments — only normalized domains (e.g. www.github.com -> github.com) and bounded page-title samples. Only http/https visits are aggregated; file:, edge:, chrome:, extension and other non-web URLs are excluded (and counted so clients can explain the omission). Full per-visit URLs are available only through get_history, and may contain sensitive data.

• profile, date, start_time, end_time, limit, offset — identical semantics to get_history (same profile resolution, DST-aware local day/window boundaries, limit cap and pagination; limit/offset page over the underlying visit rows).

• group_by — bucket granularity. Currently only "hour" is supported.

• include_titles — include sample_titles for each domain (default true). Set to false for domains and counts only.

• max_titles_per_site — maximum sample titles per domain per bucket (default 3, capped at 10). Values <= 0 return empty title lists.

The result is an object:

Each bucket contains:

sample_titles holds up to max_titles_per_site page titles seen for that domain in that bucket: deduplicated, in first-seen order, whitespace-trimmed, empty titles skipped, and truncated to 160 characters. Titles are page text only — never URLs.

Example:

{
  "profile": "Profile 2",
  "date": "2026-08-05",
  "group_by": "hour",
  "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "entries_considered": 206,
  "web_entries": 206,
  "non_web_entries_skipped": 0,
  "buckets": [
    {
      "hour": "2026-08-05T08:00:00-07:00",
      "label": "8 AM",
      "total_web_visits": 48,
      "sites": [
        {
          "domain": "map.pscleanair.org",
          "visits": 47,
          "sample_titles": ["Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Map"]
        },
        {
          "domain": "inciweb.nwcg.gov",
          "visits": 1,
          "sample_titles": ["InciWeb - Incident Information System"]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "offset": 0,
  "limit": 10000,
  "has_more": false,
  "next_offset": null
}

MCP client configuration

For MCP clients that read a JSON config (mcpServers), the recommended entry runs the published server from GitHub with uvx — no clone required:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "edge-history": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/adrianba/edge-browser-mcp",
        "edge-history-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

If you have the repo checked out and prefer running from source, use uv with a cwd pointing at the repo instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "edge-history": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "edge-history-mcp"],
      "cwd": "C:\\path\\to\\edge-browser-mcp"
    }
  }
}

GitHub Copilot CLI

The recommended setup is the one-line user-config install shown in Quick start:

copilot mcp add edge-history -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/adrianba/edge-browser-mcp edge-history-mcp

This works from any directory and uses "type": "local" (a stdio server Copilot launches as a subprocess). Verify with copilot mcp list (it appears under User servers) and inspect it with copilot mcp get edge-history.

Copilot CLI loads MCP definitions from several locations:

Workspace .mcp.json (local development only)

This repo ships a workspace .mcp.json that runs the server from source (uv run edge-history-mcp). It auto-loads only when you start copilot from the repo directory, so it's meant for developing/testing this project — not for everyday use. End users should prefer the uvx-from-git command above.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "edge-history": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "edge-history-mcp"],
      "tools": ["*"]
    }
  }
}

Testing this project in a Copilot CLI session (from source)

1. Pre-flight in a normal shell:

   cd C:\Repos\edge-browser-mcp
   uv sync                  # install dependencies
   uv run edge-history-mcp  # optional: confirm it starts on stdio (Ctrl+C to exit)
   copilot mcp list         # expect: Workspace servers: edge-history (local)

2. Launch Copilot CLI from the repo directory so .mcp.json is loaded, and trust the folder when prompted:

   copilot

3. Inside the session, confirm the server and tools are available:

   /mcp        # MCP UI — edge-history should be listed/enabled
   /env        # shows loaded MCP servers and tools

4. Exercise the tools with natural-language prompts (approve the first tool use):

   List my Edge browser profiles using the edge-history MCP server.
   Using edge-history, get my browsing history for profile "Profile 1" on 2026-06-20.
   Get the first 5 history entries for the "Google Drive" profile on 2026-06-20.

5. Check error handling:

   Using edge-history, get history for a profile called "DoesNotExist" on 2026-06-20.
   Get history for "Profile 1" on 06/20/2026.   (wrong format -> clean error)

To isolate the test from your real Copilot config, point Copilot at a throwaway home first: $env:COPILOT_HOME = "C:\Temp\copilot-test". The workspace .mcp.json still loads by working directory.

Privacy & security

Browsing history is sensitive personal data. Be aware:

• The server exposes the full history of every profile to whichever MCP client launches it. Only enable it with clients you trust.

• get_history returns URLs verbatim; they may embed secrets (auth/session tokens, password-reset links, pre-signed URLs). Treat tool output as sensitive and only request full URLs when they are actually needed.

• get_history_summary is the lower-risk default: it deliberately returns domains only, dropping paths, query strings and fragments, and skips non-web (file:, edge:, chrome:, extension) URLs entirely. It adds a small sample of page titles per domain for context; titles can still be descriptive, so use include_titles=False if even that is too much. Full per-visit URLs are only ever returned by get_history.

• A plaintext copy of the History database is written to a temporary directory for the duration of each query and then deleted.

• Reads are strictly read-only; Edge's own data is never modified.

Notes

• By default the server reads Edge data from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data. Override with the EDGE_USER_DATA_DIR environment variable (useful for testing).

• Guest Profile and System Profile are excluded from list_profiles.

• Chromium stores timestamps as microseconds since 1601-01-01 UTC; the server converts these to local time using the OS timezone (determined via tzlocal, not Python's process-local timezone). Override with EDGE_HISTORY_TIMEZONE.

• The MCP SDK dependency is pinned to mcp[cli]>=1.2.0,<2.0.0 because the server uses the MCP 1.x FastMCP API (mcp.server.fastmcp). MCP 2.x removed this module; do not upgrade until the server is migrated to the 2.x API.

Development

Clone the repo and use uv:

uv sync                  # create .venv and install deps (incl. dev)
uv run edge-history-mcp  # run the server on stdio (Ctrl+C to exit)
uv run pytest            # run the test suite
uv build                 # build sdist + wheel into dist/

uv run edge-history-mcp starts the server on stdio; it is normally launched by an MCP client rather than run directly.

Tests build a synthetic Edge-shaped SQLite database in a temp directory, so they do not touch your real Edge installation. CI runs them on every push/PR (see .github/workflows/ci.yml).