Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type @ followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@McGill myCourses MCP Server What assignments are due this week?"
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives Claude Desktop access to your McGill University myCourses (Brightspace) account — ask Claude about your courses and upcoming deadlines in plain language.
Unofficial project. Not affiliated with McGill University or D2L Corporation. This is a personal-use scraper/integration built by a student, for students — use it to read your own data, and be mindful of McGill's terms of service.
Students don't get API access to Brightspace, so this project automates the actual browser flow with Playwright — including McGill's Microsoft (Entra ID) single sign-on and MFA — to pull real data out of myCourses, and exposes it to Claude Desktop as MCP tools.
It started as a fork of a Purdue-specific Brightspace scraper and has been rebuilt end-to-end for McGill: different login flow (Microsoft SSO instead of Duo), different DOM (McGill's Brightspace theme doesn't match Purdue's), and a McGill-specific bonus — a calendar-feed integration that turns out to be more reliable than scraping assignments page-by-page.
Related MCP server: Canvas LMS MCP Server
Everything below has been tested against a live McGill account, not just written and hoped for:
Tool | What it does | How |
| Lists your enrolled courses (name, code, URL) | Scrapes the myCourses home page course widget |
| Upcoming/recent deadlines across every course at once, each labeled with its course code | Fetches McGill's personal iCal feed directly — no login needed |
| Due dates/status/scores for one specific course | Scrapes that course's Dropbox page |
| Connectivity smoke test | — |
Login handles the hard part automatically. McGill's SSO chain is: myCourses → a "McGill" SSO link (styled like a button, actually a plain <a>) → Microsoft's login → a TOTP code you type in yourself (not a phone-tap push) → optional "Stay signed in?" prompt → back to myCourses. The server:
Detects when a session is already cached and skips the login entirely (no browser window, no MFA prompt) — this is the common case.
When a real login is actually needed, automatically pops up a visible browser window just for that step (Playwright can't toggle headless mode on a running browser, so it transparently relaunches non-headless), then goes invisible again for every call after.
Caches the authenticated session to disk so MFA is only needed occasionally, not on every query.
Python 3.12 (Playwright/greenlet compatibility; 3.13 has known issues)
A McGill account with myCourses access, and Microsoft Authenticator configured for TOTP codes on it
git clone <this-repo-url>
cd mcgill-mycourses-mcp
python3 setup.py # creates a venv, installs deps + Playwright's Chromium, writes a .env template.envMCGILL_USERNAME=your_mcgill_username_or_email
MCGILL_PASSWORD=your_mcgill_password
# Leave this True. login() auto-detects when a real login is actually needed
# and pops up a window just for that step - see "What works right now" above.
HEADLESS=True
# Where the authenticated session is cached between runs.
SESSION_STATE_PATH=.mcgill_session.json
# Optional but recommended - powers get_calendar (see below).
MCGILL_ICAL_URL=Getting MCGILL_ICAL_URL: in myCourses, open Calendar → Subscribe → "All Calendars and Tasks" → copy the feed URL. It looks like https://mycourses2.mcgill.ca/d2l/le/calendar/feed/user/feed.ics?token=....
⚠️ That URL's token is a bearer credential — anyone who has it can read your entire calendar with no further login. Treat it exactly like a password: never commit it, paste it publicly, or share it. If it's ever exposed, reset it from the same Subscribe dialog (invalidates the old link).
Copy claude_desktop_config.example.json's contents into your Claude Desktop config (Settings → Developer → Edit Config → claude_desktop_config.json), with absolute paths to this repo's venv/bin/python and mcp_server.py. Restart Claude Desktop completely.
Just ask Claude something like "what courses am I taking?" — the first call will pop up a browser window for you to type your Authenticator code into (see above). After that, everything's cached and invisible.
If you'd rather verify the login flow standalone first: python testing/playwright_trial.py walks through it step by step, screenshotting after each one — useful if McGill's SSO markup ever changes and selectors need adjusting.
.env (credentials) and .mcgill_session.json (live session cookies) are both git-ignored — never commit them.
The calendar feed token is equally sensitive; see above.
This project only ever reads your own data with your own credentials, run locally on your machine. It doesn't send anything to a third-party server.
brightspace_api.py — the scraper/client. BrightspaceScraper (Playwright-driven, handles login/courses/assignments) plus standalone calendar-feed functions (fetch_calendar_events, filter_events_by_range — plain HTTP, no browser).
mcp_server.py — wires the above into MCP tools Claude Desktop can call, using the mcp Python SDK's MCPServer (2.x).
testing/playwright_trial.py — a standalone, always-visible login smoke test, useful for debugging if McGill changes something.
Login fails / times out — check for a login_*_debug.png screenshot dropped in the project root; it shows exactly which step it got stuck on. Microsoft's SSO markup can vary by tenant/config, so selectors in brightspace_api.py's login() may need small adjustments.
No courses/assignments found — myCourses' DOM can change between semesters/theme updates. get_courses/get_assignments fall back to a debug screenshot (homepage_debug.png / equivalent) on failure — compare it against the selectors in the code.
Stale session — delete .mcgill_session.json and retry; a fresh login (with its one-time visible window) will run automatically.
MCP server not showing up in Claude — verify the paths in your config are absolute, check Python version, restart Claude Desktop, and check ~/Library/Logs/Claude/ for errors.
Contributions welcome, especially from other McGill students who want their own courses to be the test case:
Multi-term get_courses — right now it only sees whichever term tab was last active in your session (usually the current term). McGill's course widget has per-term tabs ([2025.09] Fall 2025, etc.) that a term parameter could select before scraping.
Grades — not implemented at all yet.
Announcements — not implemented at all yet.
Content/Lessons browsing — the calendar feed surfaces content release dates, but doesn't fetch the actual content/readings.
get_assignments hardening — it's built against one course's real Dropbox HTML, but assignment layouts can vary (group vs. individual, categories, etc.) — more courses' worth of testing would help.
Non-McGill D2L/Brightspace tenants — the login flow (Microsoft SSO, TOTP-in-page, McGill's specific SSO link markup) is fairly McGill-specific. Other schools' Brightspace instances likely need their own login adapter, though get_courses's D2L-widget scraping may transfer more directly.
If you fix something, a PR with a short note on what you tested it against (course, term) is more valuable than a large refactor with no verification — this codebase has already been burned once by shipping unverified selectors.
Forked from an original Purdue-focused Brightspace MCP server and substantially rewritten for McGill's login flow, DOM, and calendar system. Built with Playwright and the Model Context Protocol Python SDK.
Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.
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