Kanvaz Guide

Free, open-source, 100% offline reference board for VFX and 3D artists.

View the Project on GitHub p4inz-code/kanvaz

MCP Bridge

Verified against Kanvaz v9.7.0, MCP Bridge plugin v1.5.0.

MCP Bridge lets an AI assistant — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any other Model Context Protocol client — read and edit your active board over a local-only connection. No cloud relay: the AI’s tool calls reach Kanvaz through a named pipe/socket on your own machine.

Installing and connecting

  1. Install MCP Bridge like any plugin — Settings → Plugins → Add a Plugin. It declares the server permission (Kanvaz’s only in-use gated permission today), so you’ll see and approve that explicitly.
  2. It’s off by default. Turn it on from its Settings panel, which shows the connection status live.
  3. Point your MCP client at official-plugins/mcp-bridge/server.js — a standalone Node process, separate from the Kanvaz app itself, that speaks real MCP over stdio and relays to Kanvaz over the local socket.

What it changes, and how safely

Every tool call MCP Bridge makes lands in Kanvaz’s own undo history — exactly like a manual edit. If an AI assistant does something you don’t want, Ctrl+Z undoes it the same as anything you did by hand. Every request is also token-authenticated; a client without the right token is refused, not silently served.

The 46 tools

Category Tools
Board getActiveBoard, createBoard, listBoards, switchBoard, renameBoard, deleteBoard, saveBoard
Cards listCards, getCard, createCard, updateCard, deleteCard, addReference, tagCard, search, duplicateCard, flipCard, bringCardToFront, sendCardToBack
Layout groupCards, ungroupCards, alignCards, distributeCards, tidyUp
Connections getConnections, connectCards, removeConnection
Shared cards shareCardToBoard, unlinkSharedCard
History & view undo, redo, zoomIn, zoomOut, zoomReset, zoomFit, toggleMapView
Settings getSettings, updateSettings
Task Tracker listTasks, addTask, deleteTask, toggleTask, addSubtask, toggleSubtask, deleteSubtask, setTaskCardLink

alignCards supports left/right/center-h/top/bottom/middle-v; distributeCards supports the x/y axis. Installing a plugin isn’t itself a tool — plugin management stays UI-only, deliberately never exposed to an AI assistant.