MCP

Flowly as an MCP server

flowly mcp serve runs Flowly itself as an MCP server over stdio, so any MCP client — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code, another agent — can read your Flowly conversation history.

Overview

bash

flowly mcp serve                 # read-only (default)
flowly mcp serve --allow-writes  # also expose send + approvals (needs the gateway)

The read tools work standalone — they open your JSONL sessions, the full-text index, and channel config directly. No gateway required.

Read-only and opt-in

serve only runs when you launch it, and is read-only by default — it physically cannot modify your sessions without --allow-writes. Safe to point at your real ~/.flowly.

Read tools

conversations_list — list conversations (filter by platform / search)
conversation_get — metadata for one channel:chat_id
messages_read — recent user/assistant messages of a conversation
messages_search — full-text search across every conversation (FTS5)
channels_list — configured channels and whether each is enabled

Write tools

With --allow-writes and a running flowly gateway, three more tools appear:

messages_send — send a message to a channel conversation
approvals_list — list pending exec-approval requests
approvals_resolve — approve or deny one

These reach the live gateway through an authenticated localhost control endpoint. When the gateway is down they return a clear “gateway not running” message instead of failing.

Connecting a client

Claude Desktop — edit its config file:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "flowly": { "command": "/path/to/flowly", "args": ["mcp", "serve"] }
  }
}

(~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, then restart Claude Desktop.)

Cursor — ~/.cursor/mcp.json, same shape.

Claude Code:

bash

claude mcp add flowly -- /path/to/flowly mcp serve

Once connected, the client can ask things like “search my Flowly conversations for the deploy thread” or “what did I discuss on Telegram yesterday” — answered straight from your history.