Alto Connector MCP server

Alto Connector

mcp-name: io.github.lukebmandel-debug/alto-connector

A Claude connector that interviews you about your own materials — a course, a novel, a research project — and builds you an interactive, filterable "liquid-glass" Alto timeline: glass cards on colored act bands, entity chips, routed connection lines, detail pages with your own schema, highlights and notes, mobile layout, and a self-contained offline file you can share.

The one rule (§0): Alto is a closed knowledge container. It connects and organizes what you provide — it never invents facts, events, holdings, or descriptions. Sparse notes make a sparse timeline, on purpose. The connector enforces this server-side: authoring tools stay locked until your materials and explicit consent are recorded.

Install

Download the file for your computer from the latest release, then in Claude Desktop go to Settings → Extensions → Advanced settings → Install Extension… and choose it. Restart Claude Desktop and Alto appears under Extensions.

Nothing else to install. Each bundle carries its own Python, which is why it is around 50MB. Claude Desktop ships Node but not Python, and stock macOS still has 3.9 — too old for this server.

Without Claude Desktop

Alto is a plain MCP server, so any MCP client can run it — Claude Code, Cline, Zed, Continue, your own script. No download, no bundle.

Add this to your client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alto": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from",
               "git+https://github.com/lukebmandel-debug/alto-connector",
               "alto-connector"]
    }
  }
}

Requires uv (curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh). uvx fetches and runs Alto in a throwaway environment each time, so there is nothing to install or update.

Prefer a permanent install? Then alto-connector is on your PATH and the config is simply {"command": "alto-connector"}:

pip install git+https://github.com/lukebmandel-debug/alto-connector
alto-connector --help      # check it works; without --help it waits for a
                           # client to speak to it, which looks like a hang

Everything works the same way — the interview, the build, the offline file — because the bundle and this are the same server; the bundle just carries its own Python so Claude Desktop users need not install one.

Timelines land in ~/Documents/Alto. Each is a single self-contained HTML file you open in any browser — no server, no account, no internet. Shareable web links are optional (see Publishing below); without them, that file is the finished product.

Then tell your client: "I want to build a timeline in Alto — interview me."

From a checkout

bash setup.sh — macOS and Claude Desktop only; it registers the connector by writing claudedesktopconfig.json. For any other client, use one of the two methods above pointed at your checkout.

Using it — what a new user actually does

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.