Anki MCP server

anki-mcp

Study and manage your Anki collection by talking to Claude (or any MCP client). 35 tools over AnkiConnect: get quizzed in chat, see what is due and how your retention is going, find the cards you keep forgetting, create and clean up notes in bulk, and pause whole groups of cards until you want them back.

What you can ask

• "What do I have to study today?" → due counts per deck, streak, reviews this week.
• "Quiz me on 10 due cards from my Spanish deck." → one question at a time, graded, and recorded in Anki with the next interval.
• "Which cards do I keep getting wrong? Help me fix them." → leeches, their review history, and rewrites you approve.
• "Suspend everything tagged HSK5 until my exam, and make it easy to bring back." → named pause that restores exactly those cards, scheduling intact.
• "Turn this article into cloze cards in my Biology deck." → duplicate-checked bulk add.
• "Add audio to every card in this deck that doesn't have it." → Azure TTS in bulk.
• "Move the cards tagged grammar to a new subdeck" / "rename the tag todo to review" / "spread my backlog over the next two weeks".

Bulk changes can be previewed with a dry run, deleting always needs a confirmation step, and when Anki is closed the assistant is told to ask you to open it instead of failing silently.

Install

You need Node.js 18+, Anki running, and the AnkiConnect add-on (code 2055492159).

Claude Desktop

Download anki-mcp.mcpb from the latest release and drag it into Settings → Extensions. That's it.

Claude Code

claude mcp add anki --scope user -- npx -y github:nietus/anki-mcp

Cursor and other MCP clients

Add this to the client's MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anki": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:nietus/anki-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

On Windows, if the client cannot start npx directly, use "command": "cmd" with "args": ["/c", "npx", "-y", "github:nietus/anki-mcp"].

From source

git clone https://github.com/nietus/anki-mcp
cd anki-mcp
npm install
npm run build

Then point your client at node /path/to/anki-mcp/build/client.js. To build the Claude Desktop bundle yourself, run npm run pack:mcpb (output in dist/anki-mcp.mcpb).

Configuration

All environment variables are optional. Put them in a .env file in the project folder or pass them through your MCP client.

Development

npm test           # unit + in-memory MCP server tests (no Anki needed)
npm run inspector  # try the tools interactively

Available Tools

Every tool is annotated as read-only, write or destructive, so clients like Claude Desktop can auto-approve reads and ask before destructive changes. Errors (including "Anki is not running") come back as readable tool results.

Most bulk tools select cards or notes the same way: deckName (subdecks included), tags (matches any), query (any Anki search, ANDed), or explicit cardIds / noteIds. Write tools accept dryRun: true to preview the change first.

Studying

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.