Motion MCP Server

An open-source MCP server enabling AI assistants to interact with the Motion API for intelligent task and project management.

Table of Contents

• Motivation
• Features
• Smart Data Retrieval for AI Efficiency
• About Motion Task Management
• Setup
• Usage with Claude Desktop
• Usage with SSE/HTTP Clients via MCP Proxy
• Other Ways to Connect AI to Motion
• Rate Limiting
• Understanding Rate Limit Errors
• Credits and Acknowledgements
• Troubleshooting
• Contributing
• License

Motivation

The primary motivation behind creating this Motion MCP Server was to seamlessly integrate powerful AI assistants (like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and others) with the robust task and project management capabilities of Motion (https://www.usemotion.com/). By exposing Motion's API through MCP tools, users can manage their tasks, projects, and schedules using natural language by communicating with their preferred AI assistant. This bridges the gap between conversational AI and structured personal/team productivity, aiming for a more intuitive and efficient workflow.

Features

• MCP tools for various Motion API endpoints (projects, tasks, users, etc.).
• Automatic rate limiting to prevent exceeding Motion API quotas (12 calls per 3 minutes).
• Persistent state for rate limiting across server restarts, using a local SQLite database.

Smart Data Retrieval for AI Efficiency

This MCP server is engineered with AI assistants in mind, particularly concerning the volume and relevance of data exchanged. Interacting with APIs can often result in verbose responses, flooding an AI's context window with information that might not be immediately useful. To address this, the server incorporates several strategies for token efficiency:

• Sensible Defaults: For most tools that retrieve data (like fetching tasks or projects), the server returns a curated set of default fields. These defaults are chosen to provide the most commonly useful information at a glance, ensuring you get key details without unnecessary clutter.

• User-Controlled Specificity: While defaults are helpful, you're always in control. If you need more (or different) information, you can instruct your AI assistant to request specific fields from the Motion API. This can range from asking for a few additional details to requesting the complete data set for a particular item. This flexibility ensures you get exactly what you need, when you need it.

• Intelligent Handling of Complex Data: The server employs smart processing for complex data structures, like lists of items or nested information. For instance:

  • When you ask for a list of task assignees, it might, by default, return just their names for brevity.
  • Dates are often automatically formatted into a consistent, human-readable YYYY-MM-DD format.
  • Information within nested objects (like a project manager's details) can be accessed directly (e.g., manager.name) or simplified by default.

The overarching goal is to strike a balance: deliver rich, informative data from your Motion workspace while respecting the operational constraints of AI assistants. This makes interactions smoother, faster, and more focused on the information that truly matters for your workflow.

About Motion Task Management

Motion (https://www.usemotion.com/) is an AI-powered platform designed to unify and automate task management, project planning, and calendar scheduling. Key aspects relevant to this MCP server include:

• AI Task & Calendar Planning: Motion uses AI t

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