📓 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

ℹ️ The GistPad MCP server is built using Node.js and so before you perform the following steps, you need to ensure that you've got Node.js already installed.

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

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

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

Restart your MCP client (optionally, depending on the tool)
:partying_face: 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.

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.

Daily notes

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

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

Archiving

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

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.

Prompts

add_prompt - Add a new prompt to your prompts collection.
delete_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 - Include archived gists in the list of MCP resources (Note: The list_archived_gists tool is always available)
--starred - Include starred gists in the list of MCP resources (Note: The list_starred_gists tool is always available)
--daily - Include daily notes in the list of MCP resources (Note: The list_daily_notes tool is always available)
--markdown - Filter the list of gists that are returned, to only those that are composed of Markdown files.

gistpad-mcp