mcp-outline

An MCP server that connects Claude Code to your Outline knowledge base, giving Claude tools to search and retrieve documents.

Tools

• outline_search — full-text search across your Outline workspace

• outline_get_document — fetch a document's full content by ID

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+

• An Outline API key — go to Preferences → API & Access → New API key

  Use the scope documents:read to restrict the key to read-only document access:

  

Setup

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/mcp-outline.git ~/.claude/mcp-outline
cd ~/.claude/mcp-outline
npm install

You can clone it anywhere; ~/.claude/mcp-outline is just a tidy location that keeps it with your Claude config.

2. Register the MCP server globally

Run this once from your terminal to add the server to your user-level Claude Code config (available in every project):

claude mcp add -s user outline \
  npx tsx /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/.claude/mcp-outline/src/server.ts \
  --env OUTLINE_API_KEY=YOUR_OUTLINE_API_KEY \
  --env OUTLINE_BASE_URL=https://app.getoutline.com

Replace:

• /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/.claude/mcp-outline with the actual absolute path where you cloned the repo

• YOUR_OUTLINE_API_KEY with your Outline API key

• Omit --env OUTLINE_BASE_URL=... if you use the default https://app.getoutline.com

The -s user flag registers the server at the user scope, so it is available globally in every Claude Code session without needing per-project configuration.

3. Verify

claude mcp list

outline should appear in the list of active MCP servers.

Usage

Once configured, Claude Code can use the Outline tools automatically when you ask questions about your docs:

"Search our Outline for the onboarding guide"

"Get the Outline document with ID abc-123"

License

ISC