The AI agent

Noeto ships an MCP server: a small program that gives an AI assistant a way to work your board. Ask Claude what is assigned to you, have it write up a bug as a card, or move something to Done when you have finished it.

MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is the standard assistants use to reach outside tools. You do not need to know anything about it beyond the setup below.

What it can do

See your boards	list them, read one in full, read one card with its comments
Search	across every board — by text, assignee, label, priority, column, due date, or what is overdue
Create and change cards	title, description, assignee, priority, due date, labels
Move cards	to another column, or reorder within one
Comment	as you
See the team	who is on it

You can talk to it in ordinary words. Names work where names are unambiguous — move it to Done, assign it to Anna — and if a name matches two things it says so and lists them rather than guessing.

What it deliberately cannot do

• Delete anything. Not a card, not a column, not a board. A card in the wrong column is recoverable; a deleted one is not.
• Create boards, columns or labels. Setting a board up is a decision, and not one to hand to an assistant working from a sentence.
• Leave its team. It uses an access token, so it is confined to that team and cannot issue itself another.
• Touch files. It can see that a card has attachments; it cannot upload or read them.

Setting it up

1. Issue an access token. Settings → Access tokens → Create token. Copy the secret. See access tokens for what it can reach.

2. Install Docker, if you do not have it. Docker Desktop on macOS or Windows.

3. Tell your assistant about it. In Claude Code, add this to ~/.claude.json or to a project’s .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noeto": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "NOETO_TOKEN", "-e", "NOETO_API_URL",
               "ghcr.io/noeto-tasks/noeto-mcp:latest"],
      "env": {
        "NOETO_TOKEN": "noeto_pat_...",
        "NOETO_API_URL": "https://api.noeto.online/api/v1"
      }
    }
  }
}

Paste your token in place of noeto_pat_.... Restart the assistant and ask it what is on your boards.

There is nothing else to install. The image is fetched the first time and runs only while you are talking to it.

Where it runs

The server runs on your own machine, next to the assistant. Your token never leaves it, and it talks to Noeto over the same API the web app uses.

That is also its limit: it works with Claude Code and the desktop app, which can start a program locally. claude.ai in a browser and the phone apps cannot, so they cannot reach your board this way.

If something goes wrong

“The noeto access token was rejected.” It was revoked or has expired. Issue a new one and update the config.

It cannot reach Noeto at all. Check NOETO_API_URL. If you are pointing at a Noeto running on your own machine, note that localhost inside a container means the container — use host.docker.internal instead. The server says so in the error when it detects that.

The assistant cannot see the tools. Restart it. Most hosts read their MCP configuration only at startup.

Should you let it?

It acts as you, and everything it does is attributable to you and visible on the board — every card it creates, every comment it writes. It cannot delete your work, and you can revoke its token in one click.

The honest caution: an assistant working from a sentence can misread the sentence. Reading is safe. For writing, the useful habit is the one you would have with a new colleague — let it do the work, then look at the board.