chrome-bookmarks-mcp

Work in progress — walking skeleton. Tools land slice by slice; see docs/milestones/.

An MCP server that gives Claude read/write access to Chrome (and Brave/Edge) bookmarks for agentic reorganisation: tree analysis, folder-structure proposals, batch move/rename/delete plans with snapshots and rollback, deduplication, dead-link detection, and stale-bookmark detection via Chrome's History database.

Architecture

Claude Desktop / Claude Code
        ⇅ stdio (MCP)
  packages/mcp-server   (Node.js / TypeScript, SDK-free tool seam)
        ⇅ WebSocket on 127.0.0.1:<PORT>   (localhost only)
  packages/extension    (Manifest V3 service worker)
        ⇅ chrome.bookmarks API
  Live Chrome — changes visible instantly, sync-safe

Writes go only through the extension (chrome.bookmarks); Chrome's Bookmarks file is never written. Reads currently parse the Bookmarks file; live reads through the extension arrive with a later milestone.

Tools

Tool	Kind	What it answers
bookmarks_status	read	browser/profile, Bookmarks file found?, bridge connected?, writes enabled?
bookmarks_tree	read	folder outline with counts (no URLs), from roots or a folder guid, depth-limited

Write tools (planned: plan_*, apply_plan, rollback) are hidden unless BOOKMARKS_ENABLE_WRITE=1; each defaults to dryRun: true and snapshots first. See docs/adr/0002-write-path-and-safety.md.

Quick start (Claude Code, from this repo)

pnpm install && pnpm build

.mcp.json in the repo root registers the server as chrome-bookmarks. Ask: "what's the state of my bookmarks bridge?" → bookmarks_status. For live access load the extension: chrome://extensions → Developer mode → Load unpacked → packages/extension/dist.

Config (env): BOOKMARKS_BROWSER (chrome|brave|edge) · BOOKMARKS_PROFILE (Default) · BOOKMARKS_WS_PORT (48765; the extension reads chrome.storage.local.wsPort, default 48765) · BOOKMARKS_ENABLE_WRITE · BOOKMARKS_FILE (override path) · BOOKMARKS_LOG_LEVEL.

Development

./init.sh            # deps, typecheck, build, smoke
pnpm verify          # typecheck + lint + test — the only definition of "done"
make ext             # build the unpacked extension → packages/extension/dist
pnpm -F @chrome-bookmarks-mcp/server inspect   # MCP Inspector

How this repo is developed with agents: CLAUDE.md (rules), CONTEXT.md (vocabulary), docs/adr/ (decisions), docs/milestones/ (the one active plan), docs/blessed-paths/ (recipes), .claude/ (permissions, hooks, subagents, path-scoped rules).

AI attribution

AI-generated lines are tracked with Git AI via git notes (git log --show-notes=ai, git ai stats).

License

MIT