canvas-parent-mcp

MCP server for Canvas LMS (Instructure), scoped for parent observers and student self-access. Targets https://cms.instructure.com by default but works against any Canvas instance.

Mirrors the read-only parent-portal scope of sibling infinitecampus-mcp. Users interact via the canvas_* tool prefix.

Tools

18 tools across profile, observees, courses, assignments, submissions, grades, calendar, planner, announcements, conversations, discussions, and files.

Tools that the harness will gate as write/IO operations: canvas_download_file.

Planner: child names and a brief view

canvas_list_planner_items takes a child by name. At start the server lists your observees once (bounded to 5 s) and publishes their display names as the observeeId enum; the tool accepts either a name (any case) or a Canvas user id (self, a numeric id, or a sis_user_id:-style reference — including a child linked after the server started), and an unknown name is refused with the list of known ones. If the listing fails or you observe nobody, observeeId is published as a plain string and ids pass through as before. Two children with the same display name are listed as Name (id).

view: "brief" returns one line per planner item, at most 120 characters (cut as a whole, title first): title — <ISO date or "no date"> — <submitted|not submitted|missing>. Items with nothing to submit (planner notes, pages, events) carry their kind as the status (planner note, wiki page, …). Titles are written by teachers, so the lines come back inside the untrusted-data envelope, {"untrusted_content":true,"note":"…","data":["…"]}; an empty planner is data: ["-- none"], and a title that itself starts with -- or \ is escaped with one leading \ so it never reads as a note. The default (view: "full") is Canvas's payload, unchanged.

Teacher-written text as Markdown

Canvas stores announcements, discussion posts, assignment and calendar descriptions, syllabi and online-text submissions as HTML. The reads that return them (canvas_list_announcements, canvas_list_discussion_topics, canvas_get_course, canvas_get_submission, canvas_list_recent_submissions, canvas_list_assignments, canvas_list_missing_submissions, canvas_list_calendar_events, canvas_list_upcoming_events) return that text as Markdown by default (view: "compact"): lists, tables, emphasis and links kept; styling, text hidden from the page, and Canvas's "Links to an external site." dropped; images as [alt text]; an embedded video as a link to it. On one observer account this cut announcement responses by about a quarter. view: "full" returns Canvas's HTML unchanged. Inbox conversations are plain text and are not converted.

Context-group hints

Every tool except canvas_healthcheck carries a _meta.mint hint for hosts that group tools by context (mcp-host's context groups): domain: "school" plus an intent — whats-due for the planner and missing submissions, whats-new for announcements, whats-on for the calendar tools, lookup for the other reads, other for the download. The planner (whats-due) and announcements (whats-new) are marked canonical; the planner also names its subject argument (observeeId) and range (startDate/endDate). Hosts that do not read _meta see nothing different.

canvas_download_file only fetches /files/… URLs on your CANVAS_BASE_URL host (https), so your Canvas credential is never sent anywhere else, and it only writes inside a download directory: CANVAS_OUTPUT_DIR if set, otherwise ~/Downloads. A relative destinationPath is resolved against that directory. It never writes through a symlink at the destination, and new files are created owner-only (0600).

On a hosted deployment (mcp-host) the server's disk is not reachable from your session, so canvas_download_file writes nothing to disk: it reads the file (up to 100 MiB) and returns a signed download link that expires after an hour. An image under 10 MiB is shown inline instead. destinationPath is ignored there. A hosted server without a blob store returns files up to 10 MiB inline and refuses larger ones. On a local install, destinationPath is now optional; leave it out and the file is saved under its own name in the download directory, never overwriting an existing file.

Configuration

Set CANVAS_BASE_URL plus one of four auth modes. canvas-parent-mcp tries them in priority order:

1. CANVAS_TOKEN → personal access token
2. CANVAS_CLIENT_ID + CANVAS_CLIENT_SECRET + CANVAS_REFRESH_TOKEN → OAuth
3. CANVAS_USERNAME + CANVAS_PASSWORD → session-scrape (direct Canvas accounts only)
4. fetchproxy fallback → no env vars needed; reads canvas_session + pseudonym_credentials cookies from your signed-in Canvas tab via the ContextMint Bridge browser extension

If none succeed, you get an error that names every escape hatch.

Mode A — fetchproxy fallback (recommended, zero config)

CANVAS_BASE_URL=https://cms.instructure.com

Install the ContextMint Bridge browser extension from its releases page (Chrome: download the chrome zip, unzip it, and load it unpacked at chrome://extensions with Developer mode on — there is no Chrome Web Store listing yet; Safari: not available yet — it will ship inside the ContextMint app, which has no public download yet, so use Chrome for now), sign into your Canvas instance, and the MCP reads your session cookies from the browser on the first request and again whenever Canvas answers 401 (the session expired). In between, Canvas API calls go directly from Node — the extension is not in the request hot path, but it must stay reachable (browser running, extension installed) for the MCP to renew the session. Works with any auth flow (SSO/SAML/2FA included) because Canvas itself handled the sign-in.

Where the extension comes from. ContextMint Bridge is the fetchproxy browser extension under its new name, from the same maintainer — fetchproxy's own README (Extension) points to it. Its source is public at nullnet-app/contextmint-bridge: build it yourself (npm run build, per its README), or check a release zip against the .sha256 file published beside it:

bashCopy

shasum -a 256 -c contextmint-bridge-chrome-<version>.zip.sha256

Multiple districts? Declared domain instructure.com matches every *.instructure.com host, so you only pair the extension once. The MCP uses whichever district you set in CANVAS_BASE_URL.

Set CANVAS_DISABLE_FETCHPROXY=1 to opt out (missing creds become a hard error — useful in headless CI).

Mode B — username/password (legacy session-scrape)

CANVAS_BASE_URL=https://cms.instructure.com
CANVAS_USERNAME=me@example.com
CANVAS_PASSWORD=your-canvas-password
CANVAS_NAME=cms                # optional, defaults to host portion of base URL

Direct Canvas accounts only — won't work with SAML/Google/Microsoft SSO or 2FA. Brittle (breaks on every Canvas login-page restyling). Prefer fetchproxy if your tab is already signed in. Treat .env like a password file.

Advanced alternatives

CANVAS_BASE_URL=https://cms.instructure.com
CANVAS_TOKEN=your-personal-access-token

CANVAS_BASE_URL=https://cms.instructure.com
CANVAS_CLIENT_ID=...
CANVAS_CLIENT_SECRET=...
CANVAS_REFRESH_TOKEN=...

Precedence when multiple are set: CANVAS_TOKEN > username/password > OAuth > fetchproxy.

See .env.example.

Session cache

In username/password and OAuth modes the signed-in session is cached between runs, so a restart does not log in (or spend a refresh-token exchange) again. The cache file — $MCP_DATA_DIR/.canvas-parent-mcp/session.json by default, or CANVAS_SESSION_FILE — holds the live canvas_session + pseudonym_credentials cookies or the OAuth access token in plaintext. It is created owner-only (0600, in a 0700 directory), and only the credential binding is stored as a salted digest; your username, password and refresh token are never written to it. Token and fetchproxy modes never write the cache.

Backup and sync tools that run as you can still copy that file. On a shared or backed-up machine, set CANVAS_SESSION_CACHE=false to keep the session in memory only (each start then re-authenticates).

Bootstrapping OAuth via the mobile QR code

If your Canvas admin has disabled personal-access-token creation (some institutions restrict tokens to "the mobile app only") AND your account uses SSO so username/password can't auth, you can mint OAuth credentials by going through the same QR-login flow that the official Canvas mobile apps use:

1. In Canvas web, open Account → QR for Mobile Login — Canvas shows a QR that's valid for 10 minutes.

2. Decode the QR with any QR reader. The result is a URL on sso.canvaslms.com like https://sso.canvaslms.com/canvas/login?domain=...&code=....

3. Run the bundled helper:

   Copy

   npx canvas-parent-mcp-qr-login "<decoded-qr-url>" >> .env
   

   It hits Canvas's public mobile_verify.json endpoint to fetch the mobile client_id/client_secret, exchanges the QR's one-time code for an access+refresh token pair, and prints CANVAS_BASE_URL / CANVAS_CLIENT_ID / CANVAS_CLIENT_SECRET / CANVAS_REFRESH_TOKEN to stdout. The refresh token is sensitive — treat it like a password.

This reuses the same SSO + OAuth endpoints the official Canvas Student/Parent apps use; from Canvas's perspective the resulting session looks like a mobile-app session. Use it only against accounts you legitimately control.

Upgrading

next release

canvas_download_file now works on hosted deployments:

• destinationPath is optional (it was required). Local calls that pass it behave exactly as before and return the same {path, bytes, contentType}.
• Calls without destinationPath, and every call on a hosted server, return a delivery result instead: {via, fileName, mimeType, url?, expiresAt?, path?, bytes, contentType, note?}. via is image (inline image block), resource (inline bytes), link (signed url valid until expiresAt) or disk (path). An inline image or resource is returned as a content block before that JSON.
• On a hosted server destinationPath is ignored and the note says so.

Status

Unofficial — not affiliated with Instructure. AI-maintained.

Acknowledgement of Terms

By using this MCP server, you acknowledge and agree to the following:

1. This server accesses your own Canvas account via the official Canvas REST API. Auth happens via your own personal access token, issued by your institution. It does not — and cannot — access anyone else's enrollments, grades, or messages.

2. Instructure's Canvas API Policy governs your use of this server, in addition to your institution's own acceptable-use policy. The clauses most relevant here:

You may not use our APIs on behalf of any third-party… You may not use or access our APIs for competitive purposes… You may not interfere with our APIs, our systems, or other users… You may not circumvent any contractual usage limits.

On rate limits: "limits are enforced per user access token… with dynamic throttling." On data: "Any user information retrieved through the API—including course enrollments, grades, and profile information—should be considered and treated as private information."

You are agreeing to those terms — read by the maintainer 2026-05-23 — every time you invoke a tool in this server.

3. Personal, observer/student/parent use only. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or in partnership with Instructure, Inc. or any school district. It is a personal automation tool for an authenticated Canvas user (typically a parent observer) to read their own (or their student's) enrollments, assignments, grades, and announcements. Do not use it to bulk-extract a district's course content, redistribute student data, or train AI models on student records.

4. FERPA + your institution's AUP apply. Student educational records are protected under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Even though your token grants you lawful access, how you store, redistribute, or feed that data into LLMs is regulated. Treat any output (grades, assignments, comments, conversations) as confidential student data. Your institution's acceptable-use policy may add further restrictions on automated access — check before automating.

5. Your token is yours alone. Do not commit CANVAS_API_TOKEN to git, do not paste it in shared chats, and rotate it if it's ever exposed. A leaked token grants full Canvas access scoped to your user.

6. You accept full responsibility for any consequences of using this server in connection with your Canvas account — rate limiting (dynamic throttling kicks in well below documented limits when Canvas is under load), token revocation, account warnings, institution-admin investigations, or any enforcement action. If Instructure or your institution objects to your use, stop using this server.

This section is the maintainer's good-faith summary of the terms — it is not legal advice and does not modify or supersede Instructure's actual Canvas API Policy or your institution's policies.