comic-chat-mcp

A TypeScript/Bun recreation of Microsoft Comic Chat (1996) as an MCP server: register it in an LLM coding session (e.g. Claude Code) and have the session summarised as a comic strip, rendered with the original Comic Chat character art.

No IRC, and the server makes no LLM calls — the calling model writes the comic script; this engine deterministically does everything the original client's "expert system" did: emotion/gesture selection from text, panel breaks, character placement/facing with hysteresis, zoom, and word-balloon layout (ports of textpose.cpp, panel.cpp, balloon.cpp from the Kurlander/Skelly/Salesin SIGGRAPH '96 system).

Quick start

bun install
bun test          # 191 tests
bun run serve     # web viewer on http://localhost:4747
bun run mcp       # MCP server on stdio

Register in Claude Code:

claude mcp add comic-chat -- bun run /path/to/comic-chat-mcp/src/mcp/server.ts

Then ask the model to call how_to_make_a_comic — it returns instructions for summarising the current conversation into a script and calling create_comic. Generated SVGs land in output/ and are browsable in the web viewer.

MCP tools

Tool	Purpose
list_characters	Available avatars (from the original .avb art) and their poses
list_backgrounds	Available backdrops (.bgb)
how_to_make_a_comic	Prompt telling the calling LLM how to script a comic
create_comic	Renders a ComicScript → SVG file + viewer URL

Layout

• src/avb/ — parser for the original .avb/.bgb binary art format (zlib DIBs, masks, face anchors) + minimal PNG encoder
• src/engine/ — emotion wheel & text heuristics, panel composition (greedy placement solver), balloon layout
• src/render/ — self-contained SVG renderer
• src/mcp/, src/web/ — MCP stdio server and Bun web viewer
• assets/ — original Comic Chat character art, MIT-licensed from microsoft/comic-chat (see assets/LICENSE-comic-chat)
• SPEC.md — the full algorithm spec distilled from the original C++ source

Built via a red/green/refactor TDD workflow of Claude Sonnet agents.