The MCP server

Every workflow's board is also an MCP server. Point an outside agent at it — Claude Code, Codex, Kiro, Devin, anything that speaks the Model Context Protocol — and it can read cards, move them and trigger the worker on a station.

This is how CodeBook works with the agents you already use rather than instead of them: they do their work wherever they run, and the factory is where that work is queued, routed, gated and recorded.

The endpoint

https://app.codebook.work/kanban/api/mcp

It speaks JSON-RPC over Streamable HTTP: one POST per message, no stdio, no long-lived stream. It implements initialize, tools/list, tools/call and ping.

The token

The credential is an API token, created on the workflow itself. A token names exactly one workflow.

That is a design decision worth understanding: because the token names the workflow, the workflow is never a parameter. There is no tool you can call with somebody else's id, because there is no id to pass. A card id guessed from another workflow reads as no such card.

Scopes

A token is read-only unless its scope is write.

Anything else — a missing scope, an unrecognised value, a token minted before write support existed — is treated as read-only. It fails closed, deliberately.

tools/list still shows the write tools to a read-only token, and says plainly why they cannot be called. A tool that is invisible produces a client that guesses; a tool that explains its refusal produces one that tells you what to fix.

The tools

Reading

Tool	What it does
board_overview	The workflow's board, its groups and columns, with counts
list_columns	The columns
list_cards	Cards, filterable
get_card	One card in full — fields, checklist, discussion
list_comments	A card's discussion

Writing (requires scope: write)

Tool	What it does
create_card	Create a card in a column
update_card	Change a card's fields
move_card	Move a card to another column — entering a station starts its worker, exactly as a drag would
delete_card	Delete a card and its child content
add_comment	Add to a card's discussion
trigger_worker	Queue the station's worker for a card

trigger_worker

This is the one that makes CodeBook part of a toolchain rather than a destination. An agent in your editor that has just discovered a bug can file the card and start the QA worker on it; a nightly job can move a release card and let the line take over.

It respects everything the workflow already enforces: approvals, the station's permissions, and the retry limit. A trigger through MCP is the same job as a trigger through a drag.

What a token is not

A token is not a person. It does not impersonate a member and it is not resolved to one.

• Writes go through the same services the app's own controllers use, so the workflow's rules and validation apply identically. A refused move comes back as a refusal, not a silent no-op.
• A card or comment created through a token carries the token's name — Claude, QA agent — as its author label, so the discussion shows what actually wrote it.

Connecting a client

In your MCP client's configuration, add the endpoint above with the token as a bearer credential. In Claude Code or Claude Desktop that is a remote MCP server entry; in another agent or editor it is whatever it calls a remote MCP server.

Then ask it to list your columns. If that works, everything else will.

Connecting tools to a worker

The MCP server is CodeBook answering. The reverse — a worker on a station using somebody else's MCP server, such as live documentation or a browser test runner — is Tool connections.