nietus/anki-mcp

Study and manage your Anki collection by talking to Claude (or any MCP client). 35 tools over AnkiConnect: get quizzed in chat, see what is due and how your retention is going, find the cards you keep forgetting, create and clean up notes in bulk, and pause whole groups of cards until you want them back.
What you can ask
- "What do I have to study today?" → due counts per deck, streak, reviews this week.
- "Quiz me on 10 due cards from my Spanish deck." → one question at a time, graded, and recorded in Anki with the next interval.
- "Which cards do I keep getting wrong? Help me fix them." → leeches, their review history, and rewrites you approve.
- "Suspend everything tagged HSK5 until my exam, and make it easy to bring back." → named pause that restores exactly those cards, scheduling intact.
- "Turn this article into cloze cards in my Biology deck." → duplicate-checked bulk add.
- "Add audio to every card in this deck that doesn't have it." → Azure TTS in bulk.
- "Move the cards tagged grammar to a new subdeck" / "rename the tag todo to review" / "spread my backlog over the next two weeks".
Bulk changes can be previewed with a dry run, deleting always needs a confirmation step, and when Anki is closed the assistant is told to ask you to open it instead of failing silently.
Install
You need Node.js 18+, Anki running, and the **AnkiConnect** add-on (code 2055492159).
Claude Desktop
Download anki-mcp.mcpb from the latest release and drag it into **Settings → Extensions**. That's it.
Claude Code
Cursor and other MCP clients
Add this to the client's MCP configuration:
On Windows, if the client cannot start npx directly, use "command": "cmd" with "args": ["/c", "npx", "-y", "github:nietus/anki-mcp"].
From source
Then point your client at node /path/to/anki-mcp/build/client.js. To build the Claude Desktop bundle yourself, run npm run pack:mcpb (output in dist/anki-mcp.mcpb).
Configuration
All environment variables are optional. Put them in a .env file in the project folder or pass them through your MCP client.
| Variable | Default | Purpose |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AZURE_API_KEY | – | Enables the audio tools (Azure Text-to-Speech). |
| AZURE_REGION | eastus | Azure Speech region. |
| ANKI_CONNECT_HOST | http://127.0.0.1 | AnkiConnect host. |
| ANKI_CONNECT_PORT | 8765 | AnkiConnect port. |
| ANKI_CONNECT_KEY | – | AnkiConnect API key, if you set one in the add-on config. |
Development
Available Tools
Every tool is annotated as read-only, write or destructive, so clients like Claude Desktop can auto-approve reads and ask before destructive changes. Errors (including "Anki is not running") come back as readable tool results.
Most bulk tools select cards or notes the same way: deckName (subdecks included), tags (matches any), query (any Anki search, ANDed), or explicit cardIds / noteIds. Write tools accept dryRun: true to preview the change first.
Studying
| Tool | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| get_study_overview | Today's new/learning/review counts per deck, cards reviewed today, streak, 7/30-day totals. |
| get_due_cards / get_new_cards | num cards to study (optionally from one deckName), with the interval each button would give. |
| answer_cards | Record answers (cardId, ease 1-4) and get each card's new interval. *(Previously update_cards.)* |