Imessage MCP

A Deno monorepo containing packages for iMessage access on macOS:

@wyattjoh/imessage - Core library for read-only iMessage database access
@wyattjoh/imessage-mcp - Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for LLM integration

Features

Search messages by text content, contact, or date range
Get recent messages
List all chats/conversations
Get all contacts/handles
Retrieve messages from specific chats
Search macOS Contacts by name with iMessage handle ID correlation

Requirements

macOS (iMessage is only available on macOS)
Deno 2.x or later
Read access to ~/Library/Messages/chat.db
Read access to ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ (for contacts search)

Packages

@wyattjoh/imessage

Core library for accessing iMessage data:

deno add @wyattjoh/imessage

import { openMessagesDatabase, searchMessages } from "@wyattjoh/imessage";

const db = await openMessagesDatabase();
const results = await searchMessages(db, { query: "hello" });
db.close();

See full documentation

@wyattjoh/imessage-mcp

MCP server for LLM integration:

# Run directly from JSR
deno run --allow-read --allow-env --allow-sys --allow-ffi jsr:@wyattjoh/imessage-mcp

# Or install globally
deno install --global --allow-read --allow-env --allow-sys --allow-ffi -n imessage-mcp jsr:@wyattjoh/imessage-mcp

For Claude Desktop app integration, add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "imessage": {
      "command": "deno",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--allow-read",
        "--allow-env",
        "--allow-sys",
        "--allow-ffi",
        "jsr:@wyattjoh/imessage-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Option 2: From Source

Clone this repository
Install dependencies:
```
deno cache src/index.ts
```

Run the server:

deno run --allow-read --allow-env --allow-sys --allow-ffi src/index.ts
# Or use the task:
deno task start

Available Tools

search_messages - Search messages with filters
- query (optional): Text to search for
- handle (optional): Phone number or email to filter by
- startDate (optional): ISO datetime string for start date
- endDate (optional): ISO datetime string for end date
- limit (optional): Maximum results (1-200, default: 100)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
get_recent_messages - Get the most recent messages
- limit (optional): Number of messages (1-100, default: 20)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
get_chats - List all conversations
- limit (optional): Number of chats (1-200, default: 50)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
get_handles - Get all contacts/handles
- limit (optional): Number of handles (1-200, default: 100)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
get_messages_from_chat - Get messages from a specific chat
- chatGuid (required): The chat GUID
- limit (optional): Number of messages (1-200, default: 50)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
search_contacts - Search macOS Contacts by name and get phone numbers
- firstName (required): First name to search for (e.g., 'John')
- lastName (optional): Last name to search for (e.g., 'Smith'). If omitted, searches across all name fields
- limit (optional): Maximum results (1-200, default: 50)
- offset (optional): Pagination offset (default: 0)
- Returns contact info with phone numbers and email addresses that can be used as handle parameters
- Searches directly in the macOS AddressBook database for better performance and reliability

Pagination Examples

All tools now support pagination using limit and offset parameters and return pagination metadata:

// Get first 20 recent messages
get_recent_messages({ limit: 20, offset: 0 });

// Get next 20 recent messages (page 2)
get_recent_messages({ limit: 20, offset: 20 });

// Get first 10 chats
get_chats({ limit: 10, offset: 0 });

// Get messages 51-100 from a specific chat
get_messages_from_chat({
  chatGuid: "iMessage;-;+15551234",
  limit: 50,
  offset: 50,
});

// Search with pagination
search_messages({
  query: "meeting",
  limit: 100,
  offset: 200,
});

// Search contacts with pagination
search_contacts({
  firstName: "John",
  lastName: "Smith",
  limit: 50,
  offset: 0,
});

Response Format with Pagination Metadata

All paginated tools now return responses in this format:

{
  "data": [
    // Array of results (messages, chats, handles, etc.)
  ],
  "pagination": {
    "total": 1250, // Total number of results available
    "limit": 100, // Current page size
    "offset": 200, // Current offset
    "hasMore": true, // Whether there are more results to fetch
    "page": 3, // Current page number (1-indexed)
    "totalPages": 13 // Total number of pages
  }
}

This metadata helps you:

Know the total number of results without fetching all of them
Determine if there are more pages to fetch (hasMore)
Calculate which page you're on and how many pages exist
Build proper pagination UI components

Security Notes

This server runs with read-only access to the iMessage database
No messages can be sent or modified
The server only accesses local data

Development

This is a Deno workspace monorepo. All commands run from the root affect all packages.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/wyattjoh/imessage-mcp.git
cd imessage-mcp

# Cache dependencies
deno cache packages/*/mod.ts

# Format all code
deno task fmt

# Lint all packages
deno task lint

# Type check all packages
deno task check

# Run tests
deno task test

# Run MCP server locally
cd packages/imessage-mcp
deno run --allow-read --allow-env --allow-sys --allow-ffi mod.ts

# Publish packages (CI/CD)
deno publish

Working on Individual Packages

# Work on @wyattjoh/imessage
cd packages/imessage
deno test --allow-read --allow-env --allow-ffi

# Work on @wyattjoh/imessage-mcp
cd packages/imessage-mcp
deno run --allow-read --allow-env --allow-sys --allow-ffi mod.ts

License

MIT