frontpage-mcp

Give an AI agent complete control of Microsoft FrontPage 2003.

Modern models can describe a "Y2K website" but can't actually build one the way it was built — because the authentic 2000s look was never hand-written HTML. It was FrontPage: Themes with generated banner/button GIFs, shared borders, navigation-structure link bars, webbot components, hover-button Java applets, <marquee>, <bgsound> MIDI, Page-Enter transitions and <font>-tag styling that modern tooling can't reproduce.

This MCP server drives the real thing through FrontPage 2003's official COM object model (FrontPage.Application) — the same API VBA used. The agent can launch the app, create webs, apply themes, build navigation structures, insert components, edit the live document DOM, publish — and screenshot the result through the era-correct IE renderer to iterate visually.

Everything below was verified against a real FrontPage 2003 install.

┌──────────────┐   stdio JSON-RPC   ┌─────────────────┐   COM (STA thread)  ┌──────────────┐
│  AI client   │ ◄────────────────► │  frontpage-mcp  │ ◄────────────────► │ FRONTPG.EXE  │
│ (Claude etc.)│                    │  (Python)       │                    │  FrontPage   │
└──────────────┘                    └─────────────────┘                    └──────────────┘

Requirements

• Windows

• Microsoft FrontPage 2003 installed, licensed, and past first-run setup (open it once manually first)

• Python 3.10+

Related MCP server: Windows-MCP

Install

pip install -e .
# or, for your MCP client, point it directly at the package:
#   python -m frontpage_mcp

MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Devin, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "frontpage-2003": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "frontpage_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

If installed into a venv, point command at that interpreter, e.g. "C:\\path\\to\\.venv\\Scripts\\python.exe".

The authentic-2003 workflow

The server ships with instructions that teach the agent this recipe:

1. fp_launch → attach or start FrontPage

2. fp_create_web("C:\\sites\\my2003") — a real FrontPage web (_vti_* metadata included)

3. fp_list_themes → fp_apply_theme("blends", vivid=True, active_graphics=True)

4. fp_set_shared_borders(top=True, left=True)

5. fp_new_page / fp_set_html for each page, then fp_nav_add to build the navigation structure → link bars regenerate automatically

6. fp_insert_component("hit_counter"), ("timestamp"), ("navigation_bar"), fp_insert_marquee, fp_insert_hover_button, fp_set_bgsound("midi.mid"), fp_set_page_transition

7. fp_save_page → fp_set_view("preview") → fp_screenshot to see it

8. fp_publish("C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot") — emits the full period artifact set: _derived/*_hbtn.gif button images, _themes/ assets, _fpclass/ applets, _borders/ fragments, _private/*.cnt counter files

Tools (63)

Notes on specific features

• Webbots are inserted as <!--webbot bot="..." startspan/endspan --> comment pairs; FrontPage regenerates the inner markup on save — byte-for-byte identical to what the 2003 editor produced.

• Hit counter / Search require FrontPage Server Extensions on the host at browse time; the markup itself is generated correctly either way.

• Hover buttons are real Java applets (fphover.class). The server copies the class files from your Office install into <web>/_fpclass/ automatically.

• fp_eval_js executes JScript against the page DOM. The design surface doesn't implement execScript, so the tool automatically uses the Preview document — call fp_set_view("preview") first.

• Localized FrontPage (e.g. Chinese/Japanese builds): menu captions differ, use fp_list_menu to discover the right fp_exec_command paths.

• NavigationNode.Children is 0-based (unlike most FrontPage collections, which are 1-based — PageWindows is also 0-based). The session layer probes Item(0) and enumerates accordingly; reading Item(Count) throws 0x800A0009. The persisted structure lives in <web>/_vti_pvt/structure.cnf and is plain text — the source of truth if a node ever looks "phantom" via COM.

• ANSI paths only. FrontPage 2003 predates Unicode filenames: a path containing characters outside the system codepage fails with a modal dialog. The bridge rejects such paths up front — use an ASCII junction (mklink /J C:\work <real-path>) when working inside non-ANSI folders.

• Preview limits. The embedded preview cannot render external file:// stylesheets or Flash/plugins. fp_open_in_browser() opens the page in the real system browser; fp_check_assets() flags missing referenced files.

Architecture

• src/frontpage_mcp/session.py — all COM calls marshalled onto a dedicated STA worker thread (FrontPage objects are apartment-bound); returns only plain data across the thread boundary.

• src/frontpage_mcp/server.py — MCP tools (works with mcp 1.x and 2.x).

• src/frontpage_mcp/webbots.py — webbot/retro markup builders.

• src/frontpage_mcp/capture.py — FRONTPG.EXE window screenshot (PIL).

• src/frontpage_mcp/enums.py — constants lifted from the FRONTPG.EXE type library ({3824BCD5-7042-11CE-8E17-0020AF9F9648}).

Developing

python scripts/smoke_test.py

drives a real end-to-end pass: creates %TEMP%\fp_smoke_site, applies a theme, builds nav structure, inserts webbots + a hover button, saves, previews and screenshots to %TEMP%\frontpage-mcp-smoke.png.

Verified environment

Developed and smoke-tested (30/30) against a live FrontPage install:

Notably exercised on this setup: CP932 host with Chinese FrontPage UI (menu captions, non-ANSI path failures — hence the junction workaround), a real disk-based web, and a full end-to-end site restoration plus five exercise pages authored entirely through the COM bridge.

Legal

MIT license. Microsoft FrontPage is a trademark of Microsoft; this project is an independent interoperability bridge and is not affiliated with Microsoft. You need your own licensed copy of FrontPage 2003.