Canvas LMS MCP for students

Canvas LMS MCP for students

[tests]

Ask your AI what's actually left to do in Canvas.

Canvas LMS MCP is a free, open source MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other AI apps. It reads your Canvas courses, due dates, grades and announcements, and it is read only in Canvas: it never submits, edits or deletes anything there. The one thing it writes is an .ics calendar file on your own computer, and only when you ask it to.

Install and run it with npx, no install step needed:

npx -y canvas-lms-student-mcp

It reads two environment variables: CANVAS_BASE_URL, your school's Canvas address, and CANVAS_API_TOKEN, a token you create in Canvas.

Works with any school that uses Canvas. Not affiliated with Instructure. Free forever, no sign up and no subscription. Your login details only ever go to your own school.

Quick start

1. In Canvas, go to Account > Settings, scroll to Approved Integrations and click New Access Token. Copy it.
2. Add this to your AI app's MCP config (for Claude Desktop that's claude_desktop_config.json):

{  "mcpServers": {    "canvas": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "canvas-lms-student-mcp"],      "env": {        "CANVAS_BASE_URL": "https://yourschool.instructure.com",        "CANVAS_API_TOKEN": "paste-your-token-here"      }    }  }}

3. Restart your AI app and ask something like "what's due this week?"

To check your setup first, run npx canvas-lms-student-mcp doctor with the two environment variables set.

Some schools turn off student access tokens. If you don't see the New Access Token button, your school has disabled it and this server can't connect to your account.

What you can ask

• "What's due this week?"
• "Do I have anything missing or overdue?"
• "What's my grade in each class, and which assignments make it up?"
• "What did my instructors announce lately?"
• "What's new in Canvas since last week?"
• "Show me what's in the Week 3 module for Networking."
• "Which assignments are still due in my Networking 1 course?"
• "Put my Canvas due dates in Google Calendar."

Tools

All 16 tools read from Canvas LMS and none of them can submit, edit or delete anything there. Every tool description includes an example prompt your AI can copy, and the Ask like column repeats those prompts here. The last one, export_due_dates_calendar, writes an .ics file to a folder you name.

Where a tool works on one course, you can name the course instead of looking up its number. Give the Canvas course ID or the course name, for example "Networking 1", and the name is matched against the list get_my_courses shows. A name that fits no course says so and points back at get_my_courses.

Calendar export

export_due_dates_calendar turns your Canvas due dates and your Canvas calendar events into an iCalendar file. Name a folder and the file is saved there, for example "Save my Canvas due dates to my Documents folder as an .ics file". Open the file or import it in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.

The file holds the next 30 days and only the work you still owe. Use days_ahead for a longer window, course_id for one course by ID or name, and include_submitted to add the work you already handed in. Each event carries the course name, the points, the submission status, a link back to Canvas and a reminder the day before. Leave the folder out and the calendar text comes back instead, so you can save it under any name you like.

Privacy and security

• Your token stays on your computer. It is only sent to your own school's Canvas address.
• Nothing is sent to any other server by this project.
• Fifteen tools are marked read only. The calendar export writes one .ics file in a folder you name, and nothing else.
• Revoke the token any time in Canvas settings.

Troubleshooting

Errors from Canvas and from the connection say what went wrong and what to fix. The most common ones:

Development

npm installnpm run buildnpm test

Tests run against a fake Canvas server, so they need no account or network. The doctor command, the error messages for a bad token, access denied, a rate limit and a reply that is not Canvas, the .ics calendar export and the lookup of a course by name are part of that suite. A metadata test keeps package.json, server.json, glama.json, llms.txt and the server code on one version number, checks that the tool list in the docs still matches the tools the server registers, counts the read only tools from the code so the number in the docs follows the tools, and checks that the registry entry lists the same environment variables the code reads. Pushing to main and opening a pull request run the same build and test, so the badge at the top of this page shows the current result.

The npm package ships two registry files: server.json for the Model Context Protocol registry and glama.json for the Glama directory. Both carry the name, the description, the version, the license, the keywords, the repository and the homepage, so a listing shows what the server does and where the code lives. The server.json entry also names npx as the runtime and lists the two environment variables a listing site should ask for, with CANVAS_API_TOKEN marked as a secret value. It carries the GitHub repository id as well, and that id stays the same when a repository is renamed.

Why Canvas MCP

If your school runs Canvas, use this server. If it runs Brightspace, use brightspace-mcp-server. The two cover the same ground for their own LMS.

Canvas (Instructure) and Brightspace (D2L) are separate products, so a server for one cannot sign in to the other or read its courses. Canvas MCP reads only Canvas, using a token from your own Canvas account. Brightspace MCP (brightspace-d2l-mcp on npm) reads only Brightspace, using your school login. Neither tool moves work or grades between the two, and neither one changes anything in the LMS.

Canvas MCP signs in with an API token you create in Canvas. brightspace-mcp-server signs in with your school login through a one time setup command.

Here is what the 16 tools cover on Canvas, so you can check that your question has a tool before you install it.

More free student MCP servers

All free, open source and read only where they touch your accounts. Browse the full list at brightspacemcp.com/more-mcps.

License

MIT