The difference from reviewing in Anki is that you can ask. Get the card wrong and the assistant can explain why before you rate it, and the rating still goes through Anki's scheduler so your intervals stay correct. Authoring benefits differently: createModel and updateModelTemplates mean a note type with custom fields and card templates can be built by describing it, which is otherwise a fiddly afternoon in the Anki UI. Keep the GUI tools out of review sessions — they drive the desktop window and are meant for editing.
An MCP server that talks to a running Anki desktop through the AnkiConnect add-on. It covers the whole collection — reviewing, authoring, note types, media and statistics — and separates the tools that work on data from the eleven that drive the Anki window itself.
- Review as a conversation — get_due_cards, present_card and rate_card with Again, Hard, Good or Easy, so the scheduler is updated as you go, plus get_cards filtered by state and sync to AnkiWeb
- Decks — listDecks with study-queue statistics, deckStats for ease and interval distributions, createDeck and changeDeck
- Notes — addNote, addNotes for up to 100 at once, findNotes using Anki's own query syntax, notesInfo, updateNoteFields and deleteNotes
- Tags — getTags, addTags, removeTags, replaceTags to rename one across notes, and clearUnusedTags
- Note types, in full — modelNames, modelFieldNames, modelStyling, modelTemplates, createModel, updateModelStyling, updateModelTemplates, addModelField, removeModelField, renameModelField and repositionModelField
- Media — getMediaFilesNames, storeMediaFile from base64, a path or a URL, retrieveMediaFile and deleteMediaFile
- Statistics — collection_stats across all decks, and review_stats for retention, study streaks and temporal patterns
- Eleven GUI tools that drive the Anki window — guiBrowse, guiSelectCard, guiSelectedNotes, guiAddCards, guiEditNote, guiCurrentCard, guiShowQuestion, guiShowAnswer, guiDeckBrowser, guiDeckOverview and guiUndo — meant for authoring, not for reviewing
- The destructive tools say so and ask: deleteNotes, deleteMediaFile, clearUnusedTags and removeModelField all require explicit confirmation
Anki running on the same machine, with the AnkiConnect add-on installed — the server reaches it at http://localhost:8765 by default, configurable through ANKI_CONNECT_URL. Run it with npx @ankimcp/anki-mcp-server, install it globally as ankimcp, or drop in the .mcpb bundle from Releases. Nothing leaves your machine except what your AI client sends. No account and no key.
One command — npm install -g @ankimcp/anki-mcp-server