Scrivener MCP

Scrivener MCP

MCP server for Scrivener: connect your novels, screenplays, and manuscripts to Claude, ChatGPT, and any AI assistant, with document management, writing analysis, content enhancement, offline semantic search, and character/plot tracking.

Start with the safe first session, then use editorial review and workflows, export presets, Content Credentials, or the Windows guide. Compatibility evidence records actual coverage and limits.

Install · Mac App · What You Can Do · All Tools · Guides · Contributing

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Scrivener MCP lets your AI assistant open, read, edit, analyze, and search your Scrivener projects directly. No exporting, no copy-pasting text back and forth. Tell it which project to open and start working.

You: Open my novel and analyze the pacing in Chapter 12.

Claude: _Opens the .scriv project, reads Chapter 12, runs pacing analysis._ The first half

moves well, but the middle stalls — a three-page internal monologue starting at paragraph 14 kills

the momentum you built in the confrontation scene. Consider cutting it to a paragraph and moving

the backstory to Chapter 8.

Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, VS Code (Copilot/Continue), Cursor, and any MCP-compatible client. Reads Scrivener 3 projects on the supported platforms. Listed on the official MCP Registry as io.github.writerslogic/scrivener-mcp.

Install

Mac app: Draftbridge for Scrivener, $4.99

Not a terminal person? [Draftbridge for Scrivener](https://buy.stripe.com/14A8wHbm64Y0dR8fFdc7u01) is the ready-made Mac app. It finds your AI apps — Claude Desktop, BoltAI, Cursor, VS Code, LM Studio, Raycast, Claude Code — connects Scrivener MCP to each with one click, shows your projects, and repairs the connection after an app update. No Terminal, no Node.js, no settings files. One-time $4.99, up to 3 Macs, signed and notarized by Apple.

The server, setup tool, and Claude Desktop extension here stay free and open source. The app is closed source; the fee buys the notarized build and supports development. See the Mac install guide and FAQ. Report app problems with the mac-app label.

Free: Claude Desktop extension or command line

Prefer to do it yourself? The .mcpb extension (Claude Desktop only) and the terminal setup below do the same job for free.

From a terminal:

npm install -g scrivener-mcp

Restart Claude Desktop and it's ready. Other clients need one more step:

npx scrivener-setup

This finds Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, LM Studio, BoltAI, and Raycast and configures them for you, then confirms the server starts. No Node.js on your Mac? See the Mac install guide. To set up Claude Code by hand instead: claude mcp add -s user scrivener -- npx scrivener-mcp, then restart it (or run /mcp).

Other ways to install

npx, no install

npx scrivener-mcp

or add it to Claude Desktop's config directly:

{

"mcpServers": { "scrivener": { "command": "npx", "args": ["scrivener-mcp"] } } }

From GitHub

npm install -g writerslogic/scrivener-mcp              # latest main; requires pinned Rust/wasm-pack

npm install -g writerslogic/scrivener-mcp#v0.12.0 # a specific release

Homebrew (macOS)

brew install writerslogic/tap/scrivener-mcp

Docker

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t scrivener-mcp https://github.com/writerslogic/scrivener-mcp.git

docker run --platform linux/amd64 -i --rm -v /path/to/your/projects:/projects scrivener-mcp

The container uses Linux x64 with glibc because the pinned Narrative Lens 0.2.0 package has no Linux ARM64 or musl binary. Linux ARM64 and musl hosts can use this Docker configuration; ARM hosts need Docker's amd64 emulation. The image runs as the non-root node user; mounted project directories must permit that user to read and write.

Any other MCP client: point it at npx scrivener-mcp as a stdio server.

Optional: AI-powered features

Document management, deterministic analysis, local passage search, and project memory work with no API key. Provider-assisted interpretation, generation and enhancement use Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter. Set more than one and Claude handles chat by default; override with AI_PROVIDER=openai or AI_PROVIDER=openrouter (OpenRouter defaults to anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6, change it with OPENROUTER_MODEL). If the active provider fails on an account-level error — bad key, no credit, an outage — the server retries on the next one you've configured. If your MCP client supports sampling, chat-based features can run through the client's own model on legacy MCP connections, no separate key needed. MCP 2026-07-28 connections currently use configured providers for AI features; modern multi-round sampling is not implemented. Passage retrieval runs locally through Holographic Memory 0.6.4; interpretation and explanations are optional provider features.

Keys are picked up automatically from:

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / OPENAI_API_KEY / OPENROUTER_API_KEY
• ~/.env or ~/.scrivener-mcp/.env
• ~/.anthropic/key, ~/.openai/key, ~/.openrouter/key
• macOS Keychain (anthropic-api-key / openai-api-key / openrouter-api-key)

security add-generic-password -s anthropic-api-key -a anthropic -w sk-ant-your-key-here   # Keychain

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..." # or export it directly

What You Can Do

For manuscript operations, open a project first. The server has no link to the Scrivener app

itself and can't see what's open there. Say _"Open my Scrivener project at

~/Documents/My Novel.scriv"_, or _"Discover my Scrivener projects"_ if you don't know the path.

On macOS, _"Use the project I have open in Scrivener"_ works too (the first time, macOS will ask

permission to control Scrivener). Do this once per conversation. If the project is also open and

unsaved in Scrivener itself, save or close it there first, or the two can write over each other.

Manage your manuscript. Read chapters, create scenes, reorganize the binder, update synopses — all through conversation. _"Create a new scene called 'The Reveal' after Chapter 5, and move the old epilogue to the trash."_

Analyze your writing. Readability, pacing, style, dialogue quality, emotional arc — grounded in your actual prose, not generic advice. Ask whether a chapter's pacing is off and get specifics: which paragraphs stall, how the scene compares to your other chapters, filter-word density against your own average.

Enhance your prose. Targeted edits: cut filter words, strengthen verbs, vary sentence structure, add sensory detail, turn telling into showing, tighten dialogue, fix pacing.

Track characters and plot. Character profiles, plot threads, and style guides persist with the project across sessions. Save a profile for a character once; a consistency check months later catches contradictions — dialogue that doesn't sound like them, a limp that disappears for a chapter.

Search by meaning. Warm 0.6.4 combines native BM25 with local embeddings and optional cross-encoder reranking. Configure local ONNX models for general semantic search; the default encoder covers a disclosed English story-concept vocabulary. Results include exact passages, locations and saved revisions; changed passages update incrementally. No embedding provider is required. See local search configuration.

Track relationships. Record and query how characters, locations, themes, and plot threads connect. Relationships persist in the project's local SQLite state. Discovery proposes unrecorded character/location pairs using saved-text co-occurrence with source revisions.

Compile and export. Assemble chapters into one manuscript with your own formatting and structure preserved. Export inline as Markdown, HTML, or JSON, or write a DOCX, EPUB, or PDF to disk.

Sign and validate exports. Activate credentials with use_skill({"name":"credentials"}), then call c2pa_capabilities to inspect the installed SDK. Export a PDF with export_project, sign it to a new embedded output with sign_content_credentials, and check that output with validate_content_credentials. Credential operations run locally without an open project and use administrator-configured signing material. They do not establish human authorship or formal C2PA conformance. See Content Credentials for setup, mode coverage and limits.

All Tools

82 tools organized by workflow. To keep token usage low, tools load progressively — project tools at startup, document and search tools once a project is open, the rest on demand. Set SCRIVENER_MCP_EAGER_TOOLS=1 to load everything up front.

Project -- open, browse, manage

| open_project | Open a .scriv project (accepts .scriv folders or .scrivx files