MCP tools

anchor-mcp exposes ANCHOR over MCP stdio for local agent harnesses. The tools available at runtime include canvas operations and bundled extension tools; optional FMU behavior depends on installed/runtime configuration.

Connect an agent harness

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user anchor -- \
  anchor-mcp --data-dir ~/anchor-data --base-url http://localhost:8002
anchor install cursor --data-dir ~/anchor-data

See Agent configuration for Codex, OpenCode, and generic stdio client examples.

Tool families

Family	Representative operations
Canvas	canvas_list_workspaces, canvas_get_state, canvas_add_node, canvas_update_node, canvas_add_edge, canvas_snapshot
Documents	ingest_pdf, list_documents, get_document_index, get_gold_regions, search_documents, get_crop
CAD	inspect, list_models, set_parameter
SysML	sysml_render, sysml_export
FMU	Inspection and simulation tools when enabled by the bundled FMU extension.

Source-grounded workflow

1. Call canvas_list_placeholders for a workspace.
2. Find relevant material through search_documents or get_gold_regions.
3. Update the target node with placeholder: false and a source_ref.
4. Use canvas_organize_subtree or alignment helpers if the result needs layout cleanup.

For snapshots, keep anchor serve running and call canvas_snapshot with format="inline" when your MCP client supports displayed images.

Transport boundary

The packaged MCP server is stdio-based. anchor serve exposes the browser UI, HTTP API and SSE updates; it does not provide a hosted authenticated MCP HTTP endpoint.