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16 cards in one list. Response text, characters. Lower is smaller.

77% less response text than the official server for this call (summary mode). Measured 2026-10-17 on one private work board with 144 cards; characters, not tokens. Full mode: 9,112 (69% fewer). For one card's details the official server returned less: 2,662 vs 2,825. All results and method.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avhn/trello-mcp/main/install.sh | sh

Windows: irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avhn/trello-mcp/main/install.ps1 | iex. Checksum-verified.

Or give your agent:

Set up trello-mcp by following https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avhn/trello-mcp/main/docs/setup.md; ask me to run its printed absolute-path auth command myself in a private terminal, then reconnect. Never capture authentication output.

Then: run the printed auth command yourself in a private terminal, register, reconnect. Clients and Claude Desktop: docs/setup.md.

Related MCP server: Trello MCP Server

Measured comparison

Measured response text. Chars; independent zero-based row scales.

Tool definitions. Claude tokens from /context, one session. Node not measured. Lower is smaller.

Claude Code /context in one session; rows over 1k display-rounded to 0.1k. Node could not be loaded into /context. Separately, tools/list: 20,583 vs 33,766 characters (39% fewer vs Node), not tokens.

Call

trello-mcp

Official

Node 1.8.1

vs Official

vs Node

Boards list, per returned board (characters/board)

150

622

8,682

76% fewer

98% fewer

16 cards, summary (characters)

6,754

29,141

45,335

77% fewer

85% fewer

16 cards, full (characters)

9,112

29,141

45,335

69% fewer

80% fewer

50 board actions (characters)

15,494

55,331

71,008

72% fewer

78% fewer

One card's details (characters)

2,825

2,662

16,350

6% more

83% fewer

Comments on that card, 2 comments (characters)

586

1,089

3,232

46% fewer

82% fewer

Tool definitions (Claude tokens)

8,107 (48 tools)

19,664 (15 tools)

Not measured

59% fewer

n/a

One board, one day, one account. trello-mcp at commit cb40466 (v1.0.3); Atlassian hosted https://mcp.trello.com/v1 over OAuth, results captured verbatim from a headless Claude Code session; @delorenj/mcp-server-trello 1.8.1 via npx. Board list figures are characters per returned board over different sets (16 / 15 / 29; Node includes 13 closed boards; the extra trello-mcp board is a guest board in another organization). Card details and comments use one card with two comments. The board is private, so others cannot rerun on the same data. Official results reflect its hosted version on that date. Tool definitions are Claude tokens from /context; chars/4 would give about 5,146 for trello-mcp instead of 8,107.

Aggregate data. Method and harness. Percent fewer = round(100 * (1 - ours/theirs)); per-board values are rounded totals/count.

I use Trello with AI assistants a lot, so I built trello-mcp to make it lighter and easier to use.

A thought: with AI agents, managing context may be one of the main optimizations we need to make now. Every tool definition and response a model reads takes space from the actual task, and as context grows, output quality tends to drop.

Features checked 2026-10-17.

Feature

trello-mcp

Official

Node 1.8.1

Runs

Local binary

Hosted, OAuth

Local, Node or Bun

Guest boards

Yes

Not reached in the owner's check, 2026-10-16

Yes

Delete comments

Yes

No: list, add, edit

Yes

Create, update, delete labels

Yes

No: list, attach, detach

Yes

Attachments

Upload and download to disk, opt-in, Unix

Listing only

Any local path upload, inline base64 download

Per-object workspace allowlist

Yes

Per-workspace OAuth consent

Listing and some workspace operations

Server-side read-only mode

Yes

n/a (hosted)

Not documented

Choose official for zero install, web and mobile, Inbox, Planner or keyword search.

Read-oriented profile

Ten read tools (placement; board_use sets the local default board):

TRELLO_TOOLS=workspace_find,board_find,board_use,list_find,card_find,card_get,comment_find,checklist_get,checklist_items,server_health

Synthetic reference

Synthetic fixtures versus raw Trello JSON for the same objects, regenerated by go test ./internal/bench -update.

Scenario

Raw Trello JSON

this server

reduction

20 boards

~2166

~433

80.0%

30 cards in a list

~9266

~2968

68.0%

20 comments

~6739

~4311

36.0%

50 board actions

~11910

~4248

64.3%

22 card actions

~4888

~1368

72.0%

Card with 20 comments

~7404

~4465

39.7%

Synthetic raw pretty JSON is a reproducible reference, not measured output from another MCP server. Tokens use chars/4.

Startup cost

Default (48 tools)

Read-oriented discovery (10 tools)

tools/list

20694 chars (~5174 tokens)

4400 chars (~1100 tokens)

Initialize instructions

140 chars (~35 tokens)

141 chars (~35 tokens)

Initialize result (including instructions)

304 chars (~76 tokens)

305 chars (~76 tokens)

Independent response

Characters

Tokens (chars/4)

card_find summary (30 cards)

11873

~2968

card_find full (30 cards)

15023

~3756

board_activity all (50 actions)

16994

~4248

board_activity commentCard

5835

~1459

board_activity updateCard

5476

~1369

Docs

Setup · Configuration and security · Tools

License

GPL-3.0-or-later, copyright Mert Dede (MIT up to v0.5.0). Independent Go implementation of the delorenj/mcp-server-trello 1.8.1 (MIT) tool surface, not a runtime dependency. Trello is a trademark of Atlassian. trello-mcp is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlassian.

Maintenance

ActivityNo data
ResponsivenessNo issues

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