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Settings and tool profiles

Glyphs MCP has two configuration surfaces:

  • Glyphs UI: Edit -> Glyphs MCP Server Status...
  • Environment variables: optional security, docs, and debugging behavior

Tool profiles

Tool profiles reduce the tools exposed through tools/list. This matters because many MCP clients include tool names and JSON Schemas in model context.

Choose the narrowest profile that fits the task:

ProfileUse when
Core (Read-only)Inspection only; smallest surface.
KerningKerning worklists, bumper review, and kerning apply steps.
SpacingSpacing review/apply and spacing guides.
Kerning + SpacingYou need both kerning and spacing workflows.
Paths / OutlinesYou are inspecting paths, selected nodes, outline smoothness, stems, or italic first-pass previews.
EditingYou need glyph, component, anchor, metrics, stem, or italic first-pass mutation tools.
FullYou deliberately want the complete server surface.

After changing profiles, restart the server and reconnect the MCP client.

Environment variables

GLYPHS_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN

Require a static token on every request.

Accepted headers:

  • Authorization: Bearer <token>
  • mcp-auth-token: <token>

GLYPHS_MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS

Restrict requests by hostname allowlist when an Origin header is present, in addition to default local hosts.

GLYPHS_MCP_REGISTER_DOC_PAGES

Controls whether every bundled docs page is registered as its own resource.

  • Default: off.
  • Set to 1 only when you need per-page resources.

Prefer docs_search and docs_get for normal work.

GLYPHS_MCP_DOCS_URL

Override the docs URL shown in the Glyphs MCP status panel.

Current public docs URL:

https://thierryc.github.io/Glyphs-mcp/

GLYPHS_MCP_EXTRA_SITEPACKAGES

Colon-separated list of additional site-packages directories to add to sys.path.

Example:

export GLYPHS_MCP_EXTRA_SITEPACKAGES="/path/to/site-packages:/another/site-packages"

Use this only for debugging/import fixes.