📓 GistPad MCP

An MCP server for managing and sharing your personal knowledge, daily notes, and reuseable prompts via GitHub Gists. It's a companion to the GistPad VS Code extension and GistPad.dev (for web/mobile), which allows you to access and edit your gists from any MCP-enabled AI product (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Claude Desktop).

• 🏃 Getting started
• 🛠️ Included tools
• 📁 Included resources
• 💬 Reusable prompts
• 💻 CLI reference

🏃 Getting started

1. Using VS Code?

   1. Install the GistPad extension and then reload VS Code

      Note: This requires VS Code 1.101.0+, so if you're on an older version, it's time to upgrade!

   2. Open the GistPad tab and sign-in with your GitHub account. After that, you can begin using GistPad from Copilot chat (in Agent mode) without doing any extra setup or token management 💪

2. Other MCP clients...

   1. Generate a personal access token that includes only the gist scope: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new

   2. Add the equivalent of the following to your client's MCP config file (or via an "Add MCP server" GUI/TUI):

      hljs language-json

      Copy

      {
        "mcpServers": {
          "gistpad": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "gistpad-mcp"],
            "env": {
              "GITHUB_TOKEN": "<YOUR_PAT>"
            }
          }
        }
      }
      

Once your client it setup, you can start having fun with gists + MCP! 🥳 For example, try things like...

1. Exploring content

   • How many gists have I edited this month?
   • What's the summary of my <foo> gist?

2. Creating content

   • Create a new gist about <foo>
   • Update my <foo> gist to call out <bar>

3. Daily todos

   • What are my unfinished todos for today?
   • Add a new todo for <foo>

4. Collaboration

   • Add a comment to the <foo> gist saying <bar>
   • Give me a share URL for the <foo> gist
   • View my starred gists

5. Gist organization

   • Archive my gist about <foo>
   • Add a new <foo> file to the <bar> gist and migrate the <baz> content into it

6. Reusable prompts

   • Create a new prompt that searches the web ofor a specified manga series and then provides a summary about it
   • Delete my prompt about <foo>

🛠️ Included tools

Gist management

• list_gists - List all of your gists (excluding daily notes and archived gists).
• get_gist - Get the contents of a gist by ID.
• create_gist - Create a new gist with a specified description and initial file contents.
• delete_gist - Delete a gist by ID.
• update_gist_description - Update a gist's description by ID.
• duplicate_gist - Create a copy of an existing gist with all its files.
• refresh_gists - Reload your gist lists, ignoring any cached data.

File management

• update_gist_file - Update the contents of a specific file in a gist.
• add_gist_file - Add a new file to an existing gist.
• delete_gist_file - Delete a file from a gist.
• rename_gist_file - Rename an existing file within a gist.
• edit_gist_file - Make targeted find-and-replace edits to a gist file.

Comments

• list_gist_comments - List all comments for a specified gist.
• add_gist_comment - Add a new comment to a gist.
• edit_gist_comment - Update the content of an existing comment.
• delete_gist_comment - Delete a comment from a gist.

🛠️ Optional tools

The following tool sets are disabled by default to keep the tool surface minimal. Enable them by passing the corresponding CLI flag.

Daily notes (--daily)

• get_todays_note - Get or create today's daily note.
• update_todays_note - Update the content of today's daily note.
• list_daily_notes - List all of your daily notes.
• get_daily_note - Get the contents of a specific daily note by date.
• delete_daily_note - Delete a specific daily note by date.

Starring (--starred)

• list_starred_gists - List all your starred gists.
• star_gist - Star a specific gist by ID.
• unstar_gist - Unstar a starred gist by ID.

Archiving (--archived)

• list_archived_gists - List all of your archived gists.
• archive_gist - Archive one of your gists.
• unarchive_gist - Unarchive an archived gist.

Prompts (--prompts)

• list_gist_prompts - List the prompts in your prompts collection.
• add_gist_prompt - Add a new prompt to your prompts collection.
• delete_gist_prompt - Delete a prompt from your collection.

📁 Included resources

In addition to the above tools, the GistPad MCP server also exposes your gists as resources (using the gist:/// URI scheme), which allows clients to read them without requiring tool execution.

When you add/delete/duplicate a gist, or change a gist's description, then a notification will be provided to MCP clients, indicating that the list of resources have changed. And if your MCP client supports resource subscriptions, then you can subscribe to a specific gist and get notified when it's updated.

Additionally, for MCP clients that support resource templates, GistPad also exposes a resource at gist:///{gistId}/comments, which allows querying the comments for a gist (without needing to execute the list_gist_comments tool).

Resource configuration

If you'd like to expose either your archived gists, starred gists, and/or daily notes as resources, then simply update your MCP server config to pass the --archived, --starred, and/or --daily flags to the gistpad-mcp CLI.

💬 Reusable prompts

GistPad allows you to create and manage parameterized/reusable prompts that are stored as markdown files in a gist. You can manage prompts using the add_prompt and delete_prompt tool, by simply asking your MCP client to create/delete a prompt, with the specified contents/arguments you want.

Behind the scenes, prompts are stored as markdown files in a gist called 💬 Prompts (which is automatically created by the add_prompt tool). The prompt files include their prompt as the body, and optionally, a description and arguments using front-matter. And if the prompt makes use of arguments, the body of the prompt should include {{argument}} placeholders, which will be replaced when the MCP client retrieves it.

💻 CLI Reference

The gistpad-mcp CLI accepts the following optional flags:

• --archived - Enable archive tools and include archived gists in resources
• --starred - Enable starring tools and include starred gists in resources
• --daily - Enable daily note tools and include daily notes in resources
• --prompts - Enable prompt tools and MCP prompt handlers
• --markdown - Filter gists to only those composed of Markdown files

🧰 Troubleshooting

• Not seeing a gist in your list? The GistPad MCP server caches your gist list and updates it 1) anytime you make a change through the MCP server, or 2) every hour. However, if you add/edit/delete a gist using an external client, you may need to tell GistPad MCP to refresh itself (assuming it hasn't performed its hourly refresh yet). You can do this by triggering the refresh_gists tool (e.g. running #refresh_gists in VS Code Copilot chat).