tablestakes

An MCP server that gives LLMs clean, surgical access to tables trapped in messy HTML.

The Problem

Tools like GitBook, Notion exports, and CMS platforms collapse tables into single-line HTML when syncing to Markdown files. The result looks like this in your editor:

<table><thead><tr><th width="520.11">Requirement</th><th width="122.07">Priority</th><th>Priority 1-2-3</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>1.1</strong> Agent sees only their Salesforce-assigned cases <strong>in the currently selected organization</strong> (case is "assigned" when SF <code>Case.OwnerId</code> matches the agent's linked SF user ID)...</td><td>Must</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

This is unreadable for humans and unreliable for LLMs. Models struggle to parse collapsed HTML tables, frequently hallucinate cell boundaries, and cannot edit them without corrupting the structure.

tablestakes fixes this. It sits between the LLM and the file, converting tables to clean pipe format on read and writing back in the original format on save — preserving GitBook compatibility, HTML attributes, and inline formatting.

What the LLM Sees

Discovery — scan a 26-table document in one call:

26 tables

T0 pipe 5r 3c v:485f65f7b470 [Cross-Domain Dependencies]
  A:Integration | B:Source | C:Requirements

T2 gitbook 18r 3c v:77a9495fd328 [Case List]
  A:Requirement | B:Priority | C:Priority 1-2-3

T7 gitbook 3r 4c v:d9a9a45a370f [Attachments]
  A:Requirement | B:Priority | C:Dependency | D:Priority 1-2-3

Read — collapsed HTML becomes a clean pipe table:

v:d9a9a45a370f gitbook 3r 4c [Attachments]
A:Requirement | B:Priority | C:Dependency | D:Priority 1-2-3
| Requirement | Priority | Dependency | Priority 1-2-3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **5.1** View inbound attachments in-app... | Must | — | 1 |
| **5.2** Send outbound attachments... | Must | Blocked on SF API | 1 |
| **5.3** Attachment file size limits... | Should | — |  |

Write — surgical cell edit, version-checked:

v:5749c94ffb1f

14 characters. The file is updated, GitBook HTML format preserved, width attributes intact.

Token Efficiency

Baseline: Claude Code's built-in Read + Edit tools operating on the same file. Measured on a synthetic 18-row, 4-column table with realistic requirement-style content (bold IDs, inline emphasis, mixed-length cells).

Where the savings come from:

• Read (HTML): collapsed HTML tags (<td>, <tr>, <th>, <strong>, width="...") are pure overhead. Pipe tables carry the same information without markup. The Read tool also adds cat -n line-number prefixes.
• Read (GFM): modest savings from stripping line-number prefixes and surrounding document context. The table content itself is already clean.
• Write: the Edit tool requires old_string (enough context to be unique in the file) + new_string (the modified version), both generated as output tokens. For GFM, old_string is the entire row line (~190 chars). tablesta

... View full README on GitHub