bookstack-mcp

This is an HTTP MCP server that allows your agents to communicated with Bookstack.

I built this MCP server because I use bookstack pretty heavily. I could not find a good solution for letting my LLM read and update books using an HTTP powered MCP server.

Getting started

I built this with the intention that it would run alongside bookstack using docker compose.

Configuration

The server is configured with environment variables (a local .env file is also loaded — see .env.example):

Note the BookStack API token is not configured on the server. Each request carries the token and the server forwards it to BookStack, so a single instance can serve multiple users/tokens — see Authentication below.

Example docker compose

The server is meant to run on the same Docker network as BookStack so it can reach it by service name. Point BOOKSTACK_BASE_URL at the bookstack service (over the internal network) rather than a public/localhost URL:

services:
  bookstack:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest
    environment:
      APP_URL: http://localhost:6875
      # BookStack also needs a database service and its DB_* settings.
      # See https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/installation/ for a
      # complete BookStack + MySQL compose setup.
    ports:
      - "6875:6875"

  bookstack-mcp:
    build: .
    environment:
      BOOKSTACK_BASE_URL: http://bookstack:6875
      PORT: "6045"
      LOG_LEVEL: info
    ports:
      - "6045:6045"
    depends_on:
      - bookstack

Then point your MCP client at http://<host>:6045/mcp. A GET /health endpoint is available for container health checks.

Authentication

Create an API token in BookStack (Edit Profile → API Tokens → Create Token), which gives you a Token ID and a Token Secret. Send them on every request in the Authorization header, joined with a colon:

Authorization: Token <token_id>:<token_secret>

The Token / Bearer scheme prefix is optional (a raw <id>:<secret> value is also accepted). Requests without a token are rejected with 401. The server forwards the token to BookStack, so it inherits exactly the permissions of that token's user.

Related MCP server: mcp-docs

Available tools

The server exposes four tools over the MCP endpoint (POST /mcp).

bookstack_search

Search across all BookStack content (shelves, books, chapters, and pages).

This tool is Read-only.

bookstack_crud

Create, read, update, delete, or list BookStack entities. Works across four entity types: book, chapter, page, and shelf.

data fields by entity (* = required on create; all optional on update):

bookstack_read_page

Read a page's content as markdown. Returns the page body as raw markdown text (not HTML or JSON), via BookStack's markdown export endpoint.

This tool is read-only.

bookstack_write_page

Overwrite an existing page's content with markdown. This is update-only — to create a new page, use bookstack_crud. Returns a confirmation with the page's id, name, and slug.

The bookstack_search and bookstack_crud tools return the BookStack API response as JSON. Errors (validation failures or BookStack API errors) come back as tool errors with a descriptive message.