MCP server Total CMS

Total CMS Desktop Extension (MCPB)

A Claude Desktop extension that connects Claude to any Total CMS site's built-in MCP server. Install once, and Claude can search docs, browse content, and (with an API key) manage your Total CMS site directly.

This is a local bridge, not a hosted connector: it runs as a small Node process on your machine and proxies MCP traffic to your site's /mcp endpoint over HTTPS. That's what lets it attach a custom X-API-Key header for authenticated access - something Claude Desktop's built-in remote connectors can't do for servers that advertise optional auth.

Privacy Policy

This extension does not collect, transmit, or store any data of its own. It opens an HTTPS connection directly from your machine to the Total CMS MCP endpoint you configure (default: https://totalcms.co/mcp, the official Total CMS docs site) and relays MCP protocol messages between Claude Desktop and that endpoint. Your optional API key is stored in your OS's secure credential store (via Claude Desktop's sensitive: true config handling) and is sent only as an X-API-Key request header to the site you configured - never logged, never sent anywhere else.

For the privacy policy of the Total CMS product and totalcms.co itself, see https://totalcms.co/privacy.

Setup

Zero-config: ask about Total CMS itself

Just install the extension. It defaults to https://totalcms.co/mcp, the official Total CMS documentation server, so Claude can immediately answer questions like "how do I set up webhooks in Total CMS?" or "what schema fields does Total CMS support?" with no configuration.

Connect to your own site

1. In your Total CMS admin, go to Settings -> MCP and copy your site's MCP endpoint URL (it will look like https://yoursite.com/mcp, or include a subpath if you installed Total CMS in one).
2. In Claude Desktop's extension settings for Total CMS, paste that URL into Total CMS MCP endpoint.
3. Reinstall/reconnect. Claude can now browse and search your site's public collections.

Authenticated access

1. Create a Total CMS API key for your site in Settings → API Keys. What the key's Scopes allow is exactly what Claude can do:
   • Full admin access: All endpoints (*) with every HTTP method.
   • Limited access: add /mcp to the key's paths, plus the collections it should reach, such as /api/collections/blog. /mcp on its own opens the endpoint but reaches no content. The key's HTTP methods decide its tools: a GET-only key connects read-only. A limited key reaches a collection only when that collection's MCP access is API keys or wider. See Keys over MCP.
2. Paste it into the API key (optional) field in the extension settings. It's stored in your OS keychain, not in plain text.
3. Claude now reaches what the key allows, in addition to public content. With a full admin key that includes schema management, templates, site info and cache clearing. Leave the field empty to keep Claude limited to public, anonymous access.

Other MCP clients

The bridge is a plain stdio MCP server, so any client that launches local servers (Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and others) can run it with Node 18 or later. A client that supports remote servers with custom headers can skip the bridge and connect to your site's /mcp endpoint directly.

1. Download totalcms.mcpb from the latest release. It is a zip archive: unzip it anywhere. server/index.js inside is self-contained and needs no npm install.

2. Add it to your client's MCP configuration:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "totalcms": {
         "command": "node",
         "args": ["/path/to/totalcms/server/index.js"],
         "env": {
           "MCP_URL": "https://yoursite.com/mcp",
           "API_KEY": ""
         }
       }
     }
   }
   

   Leave MCP_URL empty to use the Total CMS docs server, and leave API_KEY empty for public, anonymous access.

To build from source instead, npm install && npm run build writes server/index.js.

How it works

server/index.js is a small stdio MCP server that Claude Desktop spawns directly (no Node install required - MCPB bundles include their own runtime handling). It opens a streamable HTTP connection to the MCP_URL you configured and forwards every JSON-RPC message in both directions verbatim: initialize, tools/list, tools/call, resources/*, prompts/*, and all notifications. When API_KEY is set, every outbound HTTP request carries an X-API-Key header.

It refuses to start unless MCP_URL is https:// - plaintext credentials on the wire are not acceptable, even for local testing.

Why not mcp-remote?

We spiked it first (see BUILD-REPORT.md for the full writeup). Short version: mcp-remote unconditionally runs OAuth discovery on startup and, on any HTTP 401 response, launches a browser-based OAuth authorization flow with no flag to disable it. Total CMS uses a plain API-key header, not OAuth

• a bad key needs to surface as a clean 401 error to the MCP client, not hang behind a browser popup trying to OAuth against a server that doesn't implement it. So this bundle ships a small hand-rolled proxy built directly on @modelcontextprotocol/sdk's StreamableHTTPClientTransport and StdioServerTransport instead.

Development

npm install
npm run build     # typecheck -> esbuild bundle -> mcpb validate -> mcpb pack

Produces dist/totalcms.mcpb. Install by dragging that file onto Claude Desktop.

npm run typecheck and npm run validate are available standalone.

Releasing

npm run bump 0.3.0                  # rewrites the version in all four files
# add a "## [0.3.0] - YYYY-MM-DD" section to CHANGELOG.md
git commit -am "Release v0.3.0"
git tag v0.3.0 && git push origin master v0.3.0

Pushing the tag is the whole release. The Release workflow builds the bundle, attaches it to a GitHub release, and publishes the new version to the MCP Registry as io.github.totalcms/total-cms.

The GitHub release notes are the matching CHANGELOG.md section, so that file is where a release gets described — write it before tagging. A missing section warns and falls back to generated notes rather than failing the build; a release should never be blocked because its prose was not written.

Two more things worth knowing:

• The registry is a separate system from GitHub Releases. People who installed from the MCP directory get updates from the registry, not from the release page — publishing one without the other leaves them stranded on the old version. That is why the workflow does both, and why it is worth never publishing a release by hand.
• fileSha256 in server.json is stamped by CI, because a zip embeds timestamps and a CI build never hashes identically to a local one. The value committed to git is only a record of the last local build; ignore it.

Authentication to the registry is GitHub OIDC, so there is no secret to rotate. To re-publish a tag that already exists — or one released before this workflow existed — run the Release workflow manually from the Actions tab and give it the tag.

Security notes

• Zero filesystem access, zero subprocess spawns, outbound HTTPS to exactly one host (whatever MCP_URL points at).
• The API key is read from the API_KEY environment variable (set by Claude Desktop from your keychain-stored config) and is never written to stdout, stderr, or any log.
• MCP_URL must be https:// or the process refuses to start.

License

Source code is MIT licensed. The Total CMS name, flame logo, and the bundled icon.png are trademarks and are not covered by that grant — you may fork the code, but a redistributed version must not present itself as published or endorsed by Total CMS. See TRADEMARKS.md.