Canvas MCP for Poke

A read-only MCP server that pulls your Canvas LMS data — deadlines, assignments, announcements, grades, and calendar events — into Poke so you can ask about your coursework in plain language over text.

Stop screenshotting your Canvas calendar. Just ask Poke "What do I need to do today?"

What it does

Poke is a personal AI assistant you talk to over iMessage. It is great at email and to-do lists, but it can't see Canvas. This MCP server bridges that gap: it aggregates and cleans up Canvas API responses, then exposes them to Poke as a handful of focused tools.

Ask Poke things like:

"What do I need to do today on Canvas?"
"What are my upcoming deadlines?"
"Did any of my assignments get graded recently?"
"What announcements were posted this week?"
"Help me plan my week."

Access model: read-only, using a personal Canvas access token scoped to your own student account. No admin or developer keys required.

How it works

The server normalizes several Canvas endpoints into clean, minimal payloads (it strips the noisy metadata Canvas returns and converts all timestamps to UTC so deadlines filter correctly):

| Endpoint | Purpose | |----------|---------| | GET /api/v1/dashboard/dashboard_cards | Active courses, in your dashboard order | | GET /api/v1/courses | All enrolled courses | | GET /api/v1/courses/:id/assignments?include[]=submission | Assignments with submission status | | GET /api/v1/courses/:id/discussion_topics?only_announcements=true | Course announcements | | GET /api/v1/planner/items | Planner feed: events, quizzes, and graded items |

Requests to the server are authenticated with a shared API key (x-api-key header or Authorization: Bearer) so only Poke can reach your data.

Tools

| Tool | What it answers | |------|-----------------| | get_today_summary | Best default. Curated daily check-in: deadlines, events, recent announcements, new grades, and overdue work. | | get_upcoming_assignments | Deadlines across all courses, most urgent first (optionally including overdue). | | get_course_assignments | Upcoming/overdue assignments for one specific course. | | get_recent_announcements | Recent announcements across courses, with optional full message body. | | get_recently_graded | Assignments and quizzes graded in the last N days. | | get_week_ahead | Everything coming up in the next week: assignments, quizzes, and calendar events. | | get_dashboard_cards | Lightweight list of active dashboard courses (id + name). | | list_courses_raw | Raw Canvas course list, useful for troubleshooting. |

Tip — filtering old courses. Canvas often keeps past-semester courses enrolled. Most tools accept a term_prefix (e.g. 26FS for Fall 2026, 26SS for Spring 2026) to show only the current term.

Setup

1. Get a Canvas access token

Log in to Canvas.
Go to Account → Settings.
Scroll to Approved Integrations and click New Access Token.
Copy the token immediately — Canvas won't show it again.

2. Run locally

git clone https://github.com/rikhinkavuru/canvas-poke-mcp
cd canvas-poke-mcp

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your Canvas URL, token, and a strong POKE_API_KEY

python src/server.py

The server runs at http://localhost:8000/mcp. To test it, run the MCP inspector in a second terminal and connect using the Streamable HTTP transport:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Environment variables

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | CANVAS_BASE_URL | Your school's Canvas URL, e.g. https://yourschool.instructure.com | | CANVAS_ACCESS_TOKEN | The personal access token from step 1 | | POKE_API_KEY | A strong secret (32+ random chars) that Poke uses to authenticate to this server |

Generate a key with:

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(32))"

Deploy to Render

The included render.yaml configures a free web service.

Fork or push this repo to your GitHub account.
Create a new Web Service on Render and connect the repo.
Add the three environment variables (CANVAS_BASE_URL, CANVAS_ACCESS_TOKEN, POKE_API_KEY) and deploy.

Connect to Poke

Open poke.com/settings/connections.
Add your deployed server URL as an MCP connection.
Add your POKE_API_KEY so Poke can authenticate (sent as x-api-key or Authorization: Bearer).

Then just ask Poke "What do I need to do today on Canvas?" — or call a tool directly: "Use the Canvas MCP connection's get_today_summary tool."

MCP Servers