gistpad-mcp

Purpose

gistpad-mcp is an MCP server for managing and sharing personal knowledge, daily notes, and reusable prompts through GitHub Gists. It is a companion tool for the GistPad VS Code extension and GistPad.dev (Web/mobile), designed to let users access and edit their gists from any MCP-capable AI product (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Desktop).

Main capabilities

• Gist management: List, get, create, and delete gists; update descriptions; copy gists (including all files); refresh the cached list.
• File management: Update, add, delete, and rename files within a gist; perform targeted find-and-replace edits.
• Comment management: List, add, edit, and delete gist comments.
• Optional toolsets (disabled by default; must be enabled via CLI flags):
  • Daily notes: Get/create today's note, update content, list all daily notes, get or delete a note by date.
  • Stars: List starred gists, star, unstar.
  • Archive: List archived gists, archive, unarchive.
  • Reusable prompts: List, add, and delete prompt collections.
• Resource exposure: Expose gists as resources via the gist:/// URI scheme, allowing clients to read them without executing tools; supports resource subscriptions and resource templates (e.g., gist:///{gistId}/comments).
• Notifications: Send notifications to MCP clients when the gist list changes.

How to use

VS Code

1. Install the GistPad extension and reload VS Code (requires VS Code 1.101.0+).
2. Open the GistPad tab and sign in with your GitHub account.
3. After that, you can use GistPad in Copilot Chat (Agent mode) without additional setup or token management.

Other MCP clients

1. Generate a personal access token with only the gist scope:https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
2. Add the following configuration to the client's MCP configuration file (or via the "Add MCP server" GUI/TUI):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gistpad": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "gistpad-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "<YOUR_PAT>"
      }
    }
  }
}

After configuration is complete, you can try operations similar to the following:

• Explore content: How many gists did I edit this month? What is the summary of my <foo> gist?
• Create content: Create a new gist about <foo>; update my <foo> gist to indicate <bar>.
• Daily to-dos: What are my unfinished to-dos today? Add a new to-do for <foo>.
• Collaboration: Add a comment to the <foo> gist saying <bar>; give me the share link for the <foo> gist; view my starred gists.
• Gist organization: Archive my gist about <foo>; add a new <foo> file to the <bar> gist and migrate the <baz> content into it.
• Reusable prompts: Create a new prompt that searches for a specified comic series and provides a summary; delete my prompt about <foo>.

Use cases

• Managing a personal knowledge base and notes with AI assistance.
• Quickly creating, updating, and organizing GitHub Gists through natural language.
• Managing daily to-dos and daily notes.
• Collaborating in a team or community through comments and share links.
• Creating parameterizable reusable prompts stored in gists.

Limitations and notes

• The GistPad MCP server caches the gist list and updates it when changes are made through the MCP server or every hour. If gists are added/edited/deleted using an external client, you may need to manually trigger the refresh_gists tool (for example, run #refresh_gists in the VS Code Copilot chat) to refresh.
• Some toolsets are disabled by default and must be enabled via CLI flags: --archived, --starred, --daily, --prompts, --markdown.
• Reusable prompts are stored as Markdown files in a gist named 💬 Prompts (automatically created by the add_gist_prompt tool). Prompt files contain the body, an optional description, and parameters (via front-matter), and the body can use {{argument}} placeholders, which are replaced when retrieved by the MCP client.
• When using other MCP clients, you need to generate a personal access token with only gist scope.