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Screenly for Claude Desktop

Manage your Screenly digital signage network from Claude.

This is the packaging directory for the Screenly MCP Bundle (.mcpb). The bundle wraps the MCP server that ships inside the Screenly CLI so it can be installed into Claude Desktop with a single click, with no terminal setup required.

Installation

Recommended: Claude Desktop Extensions

Once listed, install Screenly from Desktop Extensions in Claude Desktop (Settings → Extensions) — the same idea as installing the CLI with Homebrew. Claude handles download and setup; you only need to paste your Screenly API token when prompted.

You can generate a token at https://[your-workspace].screenlyapp.com under Settings → Security → API tokens.

Sideload from a GitHub release (testing / pre-listing)

  1. Download the bundle for your machine from the latest release, for example screenly-macos-arm64.mcpb on an Apple Silicon Mac (aliases: screenly-macos-x64.mcpb, screenly-windows-x64.mcpb).
  2. Open the file. Claude Desktop shows an installation dialog.
  3. Paste your Screenly API token when prompted.

macOS Gatekeeper note

Release .mcpb bundles currently ship the same unsigned macOS binary as the CLI .tar.gz artifacts. A bundle downloaded in a browser may be blocked by Gatekeeper.

If Claude Desktop cannot start the extension after a sideload install, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, look for the blocked screenly message, and click Open Anyway. Then try the extension again.

Prefer the Desktop Extensions install once it is available. Developer ID signing and notarization for release binaries is tracked separately and is not unique to the MCP bundle.

What you can do

Once installed, you can ask Claude to:

  • Review your screens and check which ones are offline or out of sync
  • Add a web page, image, or video as an asset
  • Build a playlist and schedule it, for example "only during business hours on weekdays"
  • Organise content with asset groups and labels
  • Share a playlist with another team
  • Inspect Edge Apps, their settings, and their instances
  • Publish a Claude Artifact or HTML page as a Screenly app (Edge App), install an instance in Content, remember app/instance ids by name for later updates, and push HTML updates as new revisions

Capabilities

The bundle exposes 34 tools. Every tool is annotated so Claude knows whether it only reads data or modifies your account, which means Claude will ask for confirmation before doing anything destructive.

Category Tools
Screens screen_list, screen_get
Assets asset_list, asset_get, asset_create, asset_update, asset_delete
Asset Groups asset_group_list, asset_group_create, asset_group_update, asset_group_delete
Playlists playlist_list, playlist_create, playlist_update, playlist_delete
Playlist Items playlist_item_list, playlist_item_create, playlist_item_update, playlist_item_delete
Labels label_list, label_create, label_update, label_delete, label_link_screen, label_unlink_screen, label_link_playlist, label_unlink_playlist
Shared Playlists shared_playlist_list, shared_playlist_create, shared_playlist_delete
Edge Apps edge_app_list, edge_app_list_settings, edge_app_list_instances, edge_app_publish_from_html

Twelve of these tools are read-only. Fourteen are marked destructive (deletes, unlinks, updates that overwrite existing fields, and Edge App publishes) so clients can prompt before running them.

Authentication

The bundle authenticates with a Screenly API token, which you provide during installation. The token is marked as sensitive in the bundle manifest, so Claude Desktop stores it in your operating system's keychain rather than in a plaintext configuration file.

Tokens are scoped to a single Screenly team. To limit what the extension can reach, use a token for a team that contains only the screens you want Claude to manage. You can revoke a token at any time from the Screenly console.

Privacy Policy

Screenly's privacy policy is available at https://www.screenly.io/privacy-policy/.

This extension connects to the Screenly API at api.screenlyapp.com over HTTPS (or another Screenly API host if configured via API_BASE_URL). Requests are made directly from your machine using the API token you supply.

The data returned to Claude is the data you ask for: your screens, assets, playlists, labels, and Edge Apps, along with their metadata. Your API token is sent only to Screenly, as the credential for those API requests.

Separately, the Screenly CLI initializes Sentry crash reporting on startup (including when run as this extension). If the process panics, diagnostic details such as the stack trace and device/OS context may be sent to Sentry's ingest endpoint (*.ingest.sentry.io). This is used for reliability debugging, not product analytics. Screenly's handling of that data is covered by the privacy policy linked above.

Support

Building the bundle

Bundles are built automatically for each tagged release by .github/workflows/release.yml, which injects the release version into manifest.json and packs it together with the compiled screenly binary.

To build one locally:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/mcpb

cargo build --release

mkdir -p build/server
cp mcpb/manifest.json mcpb/README.md mcpb/icon.png build/
cp target/release/screenly build/server/
mcpb pack build screenly.mcpb

The version field in the committed manifest.json is a 0.0.0 placeholder. The release workflow replaces it with the Git tag so it cannot drift from Cargo.toml.