# inoh-mcp

The remote [MCP](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) server for [Inoh](https://inoh.app) — the vocabulary
app for the articulate. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-capable client and
your AI can look words up in the Inoh dictionary and build flashcards for you, in your own account,
while you are talking to it.

Ask for a word you just met in an article and it becomes a card with a definition, an example
sentence, audio, an image and quiz options, ready to review in the Inoh app on your phone.

```
https://mcp.inoh.app/mcp
```

## Connecting

You need a free [Inoh](https://inoh.app) account. Sign-in happens in your browser through Inoh's
normal email flow, so your AI client never sees your password, and you can revoke access at any
time from your Inoh account settings.

Step-by-step instructions for Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, VS Code and more are in
[docs/installation.md](docs/installation.md).

## What you can ask for

| Tool                        | What it does                                                   |
| --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `search_dictionary`         | Look a word or phrase up, public dictionary and your own cards |
| `add_card_to_deck`          | Put a card that already exists into one of your decks          |
| `remove_card_from_deck`     | Take a card back out of your deck, keeping the card itself     |
| `create_private_card`       | Build a complete flashcard for a word and file it in your deck |
| `update_private_card`       | Remake a card you made, keeping its review progress            |
| `check_private_card_status` | Check whether a card you asked for is ready                    |
| `delete_private_card`       | Destroy a card you made, for good                              |
| `check_account`             | Show which Inoh account you are signed in as                   |

Things people actually say:

- "Add _serendipity_ to my Inoh deck."
- "I keep seeing _runway_ in startup writing. Make me a card for that meaning, not the airport one."
- "Make cards for every word I got wrong in that article."
- "Is my _platitudinous_ card ready yet?"
- "Take _banyan_ out of my deck, I know it now."
- "My _moat_ card explains the wrong thing - redo it for the business sense."
- "That picture on my _runway_ card is useless. Make the card again."
- "Delete the _moat_ card I made earlier."
- "Put the _banyan_ card back in my deck."

Ask for a word and the AI looks it up first, adding the public dictionary's card when Inoh already
has one and generating a fresh one only when it does not.

## Removing versus deleting

These are different things, and the tools keep them apart.

**Removing** a card from your deck ends your review of it and nothing more. A public dictionary
card stays in Inoh for everyone; a card you made stays in your own private dictionary. Either way
you can add it back whenever you like, though you start its review progress over. This is what
`remove_card_from_deck` does, for both kinds of card.

**Deleting** applies only to cards you made, and it is permanent: the card leaves your private
dictionary, and its image and audio are destroyed with it. There is no undo. Asking for the word
again later makes a brand new card, spending another of your monthly allowance, so the AI will
check with you before deleting anything. If the card is simply wrong rather than unwanted,
`update_private_card` remakes it in place and keeps your review progress.

## Cards you create

A card you make here is yours alone. It goes into your **private dictionary**, which only you can
see: it never joins the public Inoh dictionary, and never shows up in anyone else's feed or search.
Two people asking for the same word each get their own.

It is a complete card rather than a stub: definition, example sentence, three audio clips, an image,
phonetic transcription and both sets of quiz options. That means you can review it in the app the
moment it appears, alongside the public dictionary's cards — and it shows up in the app's
Dictionary tab under Private, badged as yours. Making one takes about 20 seconds.

Tell the AI which sense you mean when a word has several. "Runway" as months of cash is a different
card from "runway" at an airport, and nothing reviews the result before it reaches you.

If Inoh already has the word — or you made a card for it before — generating stops before it starts
and points you at that card. A public dictionary card is written and checked by Inoh, and adding one
costs nothing against your monthly allowance, so it is the better choice nearly always. When you really do want your own card
for a sense the existing one does not cover, say so and the AI can go ahead anyway.

**How many you can make**, per calendar month:

| Plan | Cards per month |
| ---- | --------------- |
| Free | 50              |
| Plus | 300             |
| Pro  | 1,000           |

### When a card comes out wrong

Ask for it again rather than deleting it. `update_private_card` regenerates the definition, example
sentence, image, audio and quiz options and writes them over the same card, so **the card keeps its
place in your deck and everything Inoh knows about how well you remember it**. Deleting and remaking
would throw that away and start the word over.

Say which sense you meant and it teaches that instead. Say nothing and it simply has another go at
the sense it already had, which is what you want when the meaning was right but the sentence was
flat or the picture unhelpful.

A redo costs one card from your monthly allowance, because it generates a new image - the expensive
part of a card. It cannot change which word the card teaches: that is a different card, so delete
this one and make that one.

### Deleting

Deleting a card removes it completely: the card, its place in your deck, and its image and audio
files. It does not give back the monthly allowance it used. Removing one of your own cards from a
deck inside the Inoh app also deletes it, a few minutes later, once the undo window has passed.

## Privacy and data handling

- **The server stores nothing of its own.** It acts on your Inoh account using your access token,
  and everything it reads or writes is scoped to you by the database's row level security.
- **It holds no administrator credentials.** There is no service-role key here, so a bug in a tool
  cannot reach past your own data.
- **It logs no card content, no request bodies and no tokens.** The only things written to the log
  are the startup line, rejected origins, and unexpected errors.
- **Creating a card sends the word and the sense you described to Inoh's card pipeline**, which uses
  OpenAI for the text, Google Cloud for the speech, and Google Gemini for the image. Nothing else
  about you is sent.
- **Your cards stay yours.** Deleting a card deletes the underlying media too, unless another card
  legitimately shares the same file.
- **You can revoke access at any time** from your Inoh account, and nothing here survives it.

## Security

Requests are authenticated with OAuth 2.1 bearer tokens; an unauthenticated request gets a `401`
pointing at the server's protected-resource metadata, which is how MCP clients discover the sign-in
flow. The `/mcp` endpoint also validates the `Origin` header, so a web page cannot drive the server
from your browser.

Found something wrong? Open an issue on this repository.

## Development

Connecting to the server: [docs/installation.md](docs/installation.md).

Local setup, architecture and the release process: [docs/development.md](docs/development.md).

## Licence

All rights reserved. The source is published so you can audit what the server does with your
account, not as an open source release. See [LICENSE](LICENSE). Connecting to the hosted server
needs no licence.