Morning Tab

Your internet, edited into a newspaper — inside ChatGPT and Codex.

Morning Tab is a local MCP plugin built with OpenAI MCP Extensions. Open it from the global sidebar or beside a conversation, choose your reading sources, and ask your current conversation to prepare a sourced edition.

The screenshot is a public example in a standalone browser preview. It contains no personal browsing history. Native placement depends on the host's supported extensions.

What it does

• Registers global sidebar and conversation-panel entrypoints.

• Exposes native plugin settings for sources, exclusions, language, timezone, interests, and newspaper title.

• Sends a user-initiated Update newspaper request to the active conversation through MCP Apps / OpenAI Extensions messaging.

• Stores source-backed editions locally and keeps the previous edition when validation or generation fails.

• Renders a responsive paper-and-serif newspaper with source links and explicit read failures.

Your current Codex/ChatGPT conversation does the reading and editing using its available web/browser tools. The MCP server stores and presents the result. There is no separate model API key, nested Codex process, browser extension, or autonomous schedule. Work uses your current session and its limits.

Related MCP server: skope

Install in Codex

Requires Node.js 22+, a Codex version with plugin marketplace support, and a host that supports MCP Apps. Native sidebar/panel/settings availability varies by host and rollout. A compatible web-reading tool is needed to prepare real editions.

codex plugin marketplace add lessthanno/codex-morning-tab
codex plugin add morning-tab@morning-tab-plugins

Reopen Codex or start a fresh conversation so the installed plugin is loaded. Run the plugin's setup workflow, or ask:

Set up Morning Tab. I follow open-source software and AI engineering. Use these public sources: https://github.com/ThariqS/ai-newtab and https://developers.openai.com/plugins/build/extensions. Prepare an English edition.

Open Morning Tab from the sidebar or conversation panel when your host exposes the registered entrypoints. The Preferences button and native plugin settings edit the same stored preferences. Then select Update newspaper, or say:

Update my Morning Tab from my saved sources.

If the host offers regular MCP tools but not native entrypoints, use morning_tab_open from the conversation. Do not assume successful installation means every extension surface is supported.

The repository includes prebuilt, self-contained server and UI bundles, so end users do not need to run npm install. To inspect or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/lessthanno/codex-morning-tab.git
cd codex-morning-tab
npm ci
npm run check
codex plugin marketplace add .
codex plugin add morning-tab@morning-tab-plugins

Alternatively configure the bundled stdio MCP server in an MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "morning-tab": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/absolute/path/to/codex-morning-tab/plugins/morning-tab/dist/server.mjs"
      ]
    }
  }
}

The adjacent dist/app.html file must stay beside server.mjs. This is a desktop/local-server distribution; it is not a hosted HTTPS connector or an approved listing in the public plugin directory.

How an edition is prepared

The conversation reads morning_tab_read_plan, checks candidate URLs, reads up to eight chosen public sources with available tools, and saves a concise edition through morning_tab_publish_edition. Each story cites a successfully read source; the first story is the lead. Unknown publication dates remain unknown. Preferences and revisions are checked again before saving, so an outdated refresh cannot overwrite a newer edition.

See the tool data contract and the editorial skill. URL/provenance validation checks structure and exclusions; factual summaries and actually observed destination links remain the responsibility of the authoring conversation.

The update button requests work in the current conversation. It does not run a separate model in the background. The app polls for the saved result for up to ten minutes after that explicit request, while keeping the previous edition readable.

Local data and privacy

State is stored in ~/.local/share/codex-morning-tab/state.json, with restrictive permissions for newly created files and directories. Override the directory with MORNING_TAB_DATA_DIR in your MCP server environment. Package files are separate from personal editions.

The MCP server performs no network retrieval. The app UI connects through the host's MCP bridge, without remote fonts, images, trackers, or a public endpoint. The conversation's reading tools send retrieved source text to the service running that conversation under its own policies. Private logged-in content is outside the default scope.

Browser history is not included in this package. If you explicitly request history-based selection, the skill requires a separately available, authorized browser-history tool. It does not read browser-profile databases. A manual source list always works without history access.

No recurring job is created by installation or normal refresh. Do not commit or publish personal editions, browser history, or private source content when contributing.

Development and verification

npm ci
npm run check
npm run preview

npm run preview opens a local MCP test host at http://127.0.0.1:47854 (open it yourself). Add ?narrow to test the app in a 390px frame. This host uses the real bundled MCP server and simulates conversation generation with the public example. It is not the Codex/ChatGPT host and makes no model API calls.

Tests cover URL exclusions, provenance references, escaping, failed-update preservation, revision conflicts, and real stdio MCP negotiation from an isolated copy of the distribution. Protocol checks include global/thread metadata, native settings discovery, resource loading, persistence, and reopening an edition. Browser checks cover preferences, validation errors, update messaging, source-link requests, and narrow layout.

The current release has not been verified as installed and rendered in every supported Codex/ChatGPT host. Full live source-reading and host-specific UI behavior should be checked after installation. See verification details.

Credits and license

Inspired by ThariqS/ai-newtab and its personal-newspaper idea. This is an independent MCP Extensions implementation, not a fork of its Anthropic agent architecture. Built with the official OpenAI MCP Extensions SDK and MCP SDKs.

MIT for this project's source. Bundled dependencies retain their own licenses; see plugins/morning-tab/dist/THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt. This community project is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI.