Name: URL Shortener
Author: Talismanic

LABSCO SUMMARY

No key, no account, one thing done.

Worth having when an agent produces links that end up somewhere with a length limit — a message, a caption, a commit trailer. The dependency is CleanURI's free service, so availability and link lifetime are theirs, not yours.

What it is

A one-job server: it takes a long URL, calls the CleanURI shortening service, validates the response, and returns the short link.

What you get

Shortening for any URL you pass, with the response validated and errors handled rather than passed through raw

Requirements

Python 3.11 or newer with httpx and mcp[cli], run over stdio — the documented paths are uv run main.py from a clone, or a Docker image built from the repository. It is not on PyPI, so both paths start from a clone. No account and no key.

Setup effort

Build from source — git clone https://github.com/Talismanic/cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp.git

See installation options

USE CASES

01

Trimming a long link before sharing it

Hand over the URL and get the short form back in the same turn.

02

Fitting a link into a length-limited message

Shorten as part of drafting, rather than opening a separate service.

BEFORE YOU INSTALL

What to know first

Requires

uv (or Docker for the Docker route)
Python 3.11+

INSTALLATION

Connect your client

You clone this one yourself.

Server setup

TERMINAL

git clone https://github.com/Talismanic/cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp.git
cd cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp
uv add httpx 'mcp[cli]'

MCP Clients

Claude Desktop

CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "url-shortener": {
      "command": "/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.local/bin/uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<YOUR_PATH_TO_REPO>/cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp",
        "run",
        "main.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

<YOUR_USERNAME> is your macOS user name (the path is where the uv installer puts uv; run which uv to check), and <YOUR_PATH_TO_REPO> is the folder you cloned into.

Claude Desktop — Docker

CLAUDE DESKTOP — DOCKER · TERMINAL

git clone https://github.com/Talismanic/cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp.git
cd cleanuri-url-shortener-mcp
docker build -t url-shortener .

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json:

CLAUDE DESKTOP — DOCKER · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "url-shortener": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "--init",
        "-e",
        "DOCKER_CONTAINER=true",
        "url-shortener"
      ]
    }
  }
}

URL Shortener