Linkinator MCP

🚀 Linkinator MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that leverages linkinator to provide link checking capabilities, enabling AI assistants like Claude to scan webpages and local files for broken links.

✨ Features

• Comprehensive Link Checking: Scan websites and local files for broken links.
• Recursive Crawling: Follow links within the same domain.
• Multiple Content Types: Check links in HTML, CSS, and Markdown files.
• Fragment Validation: Verify anchor links and URL fragments.
• Flexible Configuration: Extensive options for timeouts, retries, SSL, and more.
• Detailed Reporting: Get status codes, broken links grouped by error type, and parent page information.

🚀 Quick Start

Quick Setup (Automatic)

The easiest way to get started is using the install-mcp tool, which automatically configures linkinator-mcp for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, and other MCP clients:

npx install-mcp linkinator-mcp --client claude

This handles all configuration automatically. Restart your Claude client after installation.

Manual Configuration

If you prefer to configure the server manually, you can edit your MCP client's configuration file directly.

Claude Code

macOS/Linux

Edit ~/.config/claude-code/config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linkinator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Windows

Edit %APPDATA%\claude-code\config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linkinator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Alternative: Global Installation

If you prefer to install the package globally first with npm install -g linkinator-mcp, you can simplify the configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linkinator": {
      "command": "linkinator-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

macOS/Linux

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linkinator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Windows

Edit %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linkinator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Your Client

After updating the configuration, restart your Claude client for the changes to take effect.

💻 Usage Examples

Basic Usage

Check all the links on https://example.com

Advanced Usage

Scan https://example.com recursively and check all links on the same domain

Check the links in /path/to/my/documentation/index.html

Check https://example.com with the following options:
- Recurse through all pages
- Check CSS for URLs
- Validate anchor fragments
- Skip links to google.com and facebook.com
- Use a 10 second timeout

📚 Documentation

Available Options

The scan_page tool supports all of linkinator's CLI options:

Output Format

The tool returns a formatted report showing:

Linkinator Scan Results for: https://example.com

Summary:
  Status: ✓ PASSED / ✗ FAILED
  Total Links: 150
  OK: 145
  Broken: 5
  Skipped: 0

Broken Links:

  Status 404:
    - https://example.com/missing-page
      Found on: https://example.com/index.html
    - https://example.com/old-blog-post
      Found on: https://example.com/blog.html

  Status 500:
    - https://api.example.com/endpoint
      Found on: https://example.com/docs.html

🔧 Troubleshooting

Server Not Appearing in Claude Code

1. Check that the path in config.json is absolute, not relative.
2. Verify the build directory exists: ls /path/to/linkinator-mcp/build/index.js.
3. Check Claude Code logs for errors.
4. Ensure Node.js is in your PATH.

Permission Errors

If you get permission errors on macOS/Linux:

chmod +x /path/to/linkinator-mcp/build/index.js

Port Already in Use

If scanning local files and getting port errors, try specifying a port:

Check /path/to/files with port 9000

📄 License

MIT

Related Projects

• linkinator - The underlying link checking library.
• MCP Servers - Collection of MCP server implementations.
• Claude Code - AI coding assistant that uses MCP.

Author

Justin Beckwith justin.beckwith@gmail.com

Acknowledgments

Built with the Model Context Protocol SDK.