A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides link checking capabilities using linkinator. This allows AI assistants like Claude to scan webpages and local files for broken links.
- 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
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 claudeThis handles all configuration automatically. Restart your Claude client after installation.
If you prefer to configure the server manually, you can edit your MCP client's configuration file directly.
Edit ~/.config/claude-code/config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"linkinator": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
}
}
}Edit %APPDATA%\claude-code\config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"linkinator": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
}
}
}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"
}
}
}Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"linkinator": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
}
}
}Edit %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"linkinator": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["linkinator-mcp"]
}
}
}After updating the configuration, restart your Claude client for the changes to take effect.
Once configured, you can ask Claude to check links on any webpage or local file. Here are some example prompts:
Check all the links on https://example.com
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
The scan_page tool supports all of linkinator's CLI options:
- path (string): URL or local file path to scan
- concurrency (number): Number of simultaneous connections (default: 100)
- port (number): Server port for local scanning (random port by default)
- timeout (number): Request timeout in milliseconds (0 = no timeout)
- recurse (boolean): Follow links recursively on the same domain
- serverRoot (string): Custom disk location where the server starts
- directoryListing (boolean): Auto-serve directory index files
- cleanUrls (boolean): Enable extensionless link resolution (e.g., /about → /about.html)
- markdown (boolean): Parse and scan markdown files
- checkCss (boolean): Extract and validate URLs in CSS properties
- checkFragments (boolean): Validate URL anchor identifiers
- linksToSkip (string[]): URL patterns to exclude (regex strings)
- userAgent (string): Custom user agent header
- retry (boolean): Retry HTTP 429 responses with retry-after header
- retryErrors (boolean): Retry 5xx errors
- retryErrorsCount (number): Retry attempt limit
- retryErrorsJitter (number): Random delay between retries in milliseconds
- allowInsecureCerts (boolean): Accept invalid SSL certificates
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
- Check that the path in
config.jsonis absolute, not relative - Verify the build directory exists:
ls /path/to/linkinator-mcp/build/index.js - Check Claude Code logs for errors
- Ensure Node.js is in your PATH
If you get permission errors on macOS/Linux:
chmod +x /path/to/linkinator-mcp/build/index.jsIf scanning local files and getting port errors, try specifying a port:
Check /path/to/files with port 9000
Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to get started.
MIT
- linkinator - The underlying link checking library
- MCP Servers - Collection of MCP server implementations
- Claude Code - AI coding assistant that uses MCP
Justin Beckwith justin.beckwith@gmail.com
Built with the Model Context Protocol SDK.
