v0.0.1 — first release

First release. Student-scoped, personal use. Early software — the version number is deliberate.

An MCP server for Canvas LMS: 15 curated tools for everyday student work, plus a 2-tool gateway reaching all 1,116 endpoints on a stock Instructure deployment.

📖 Documentation · install guide · tool reference

Install

claude mcp add canvas -s user \
  -e CANVAS_BASE_URL=https://canvas.yourschool.edu \
  -e CANVAS_TOKEN=your-token \
  -- uvx canvas-api-mcp

You need a Canvas personal access token — the install guide walks through creating one, and your institution must allow students to create them.

What's in it

• 17 tools — whats_due, my_grades, list_assignments, get_assignment, my_submission, submit_assignment, course_announcements, course_content, list_files, read_file, get_page, read_discussion, post_discussion_reply, whoami, my_courses, plus search_canvas_api + canvas_request
• 3 Agent Skills — npx skills add JohannsenLum/canvas-api-mcp
• 3 prompts, 3 resources
• Endpoint catalog generated from your own instance's OpenAPI spec
• RFC 5988 Link pagination with explicit truncation, rate-limit throttling, and error translation
• 97 tests, green on Python 3.11 and 3.12

Known limitations

• No curated educator tools. Not a capability gap — Canvas enforces permissions per token, so the gateway works with a teacher token today.
• Personal use only. Canvas's API Policy requires OAuth for multi-user apps, and Canvas OAuth supports neither PKCE nor public clients, so locally-installed software can't implement it. See Compliance.
• GraphQL unreachable via canvas_request — #1
• No init command yet — #6

Contributions welcome, including four issues tagged good first issue.