Tools

15 curated tools plus a 2-tool gateway, grouped the way the server registers them: Orientation, Student, Content, Discussions, Gateway. Endpoint mappings are verified against the catalog extracted from canvas.nus.edu.sg.

Every write tool carries readOnlyHint=false, destructiveHint=true, idempotentHint=false in its MCP tool annotations, and states its concrete effect in the first sentence of its description — the client's own per-tool approval prompt is the only checkpoint before a write happens, so that prompt has to be readable on its own.

Orientation

Two tools for finding out who the token belongs to and what it can see.

whoami

Identifies the Canvas account this server is authenticated as, including the user's name and their role in each course (student, ta, teacher, designer, observer). Call this first when you need to know what the user can access. The result is cached for the process lifetime.

No parameters.

Endpoints: GET /v1/users/{id} (id=self), GET /v1/users/{user_id}/enrollments (user_id=self)

my_courses

Lists the user's Canvas courses with course code, term, and their role in each. Use this to resolve a course name or code to the course_id that other tools require.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses

Student

The daily driver — deadlines, grades, assignments, and submissions.

whats_due

Lists what's due for the user across all courses — assignments, quizzes, and scheduled events — sorted soonest first. This is the primary tool for "what's due this week", "what do I have coming up", and deadline planning. It merges multiple sources and de-duplicates, because that's what the question means.

Endpoints: GET /v1/users/self/todo, GET /v1/users/self/upcoming_events, GET /v1/planner/items

my_grades

Reports the user's current grade and score in each course, or in one course if course_id is given. Use this for "how am I doing" and standing questions.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/enrollments

list_assignments

Lists a course's assignments with due dates, points, and whether the user has submitted each one. Use bucket to filter to upcoming, overdue, unsubmitted, or past work.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/assignments

get_assignment

Gets one assignment in full: instructions, due and lock dates, points, accepted submission types, rubric, and the user's current submission state.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/assignments/{id}

my_submission

Gets the user's own submission for an assignment: state, score, grade, lateness, instructor comments, and rubric assessment.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/assignments/{assignment_id}/submissions/{user_id} (user_id=self)

submit_assignment ✏️

A mismatch between submission_type and the field it requires is rejected before anything is sent, and an unrecognised submission_type is rejected the same way.

Endpoint: POST /v1/courses/{course_id}/assignments/{assignment_id}/submissions

course_announcements

Lists recent course announcements across all active courses, or one course if course_id is given.

Endpoint: GET /v1/announcements

Content

Course structure, files, and pages.

course_content

Maps a course's structure: its modules in order, and the items inside each (files, pages, assignments, quizzes, links). Use this to find what material exists before fetching any of it.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/modules (with module items included)

list_files

Lists files in a course — lecture slides, notes, readings — with name, type, and size. Pass search to filter by filename. Use read_file to get the text of one.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/files

read_file

Downloads a Canvas file and returns its text. Supports PDF, DOCX, PPTX, and plain text. Get file ids from list_files or course_content. Long files are truncated to max_chars, with the truncation reported explicitly rather than silently returning partial text.

Endpoint: GET /v1/files/{id}, followed by a download of the file content and text extraction. A file type with no extractor (e.g. an image) is reported as a structured error rather than returned as unusable bytes.

get_page

Gets the content of a Canvas page in a course, such as a syllabus or a weekly overview. page_url is the page's slug, available from course_content.

Endpoint: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/pages/{url_or_id}

Discussions

read_discussion

Reads course discussions. With only course_id, lists the discussion topics. With topic_id, returns that topic and all its replies flattened in order, with a depth field showing nesting.

Endpoints: GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/discussion_topics, GET /v1/courses/{course_id}/discussion_topics/{topic_id}/view

post_discussion_reply ✏️

An empty or whitespace-only message is rejected before anything is sent.

Endpoint: POST /v1/courses/{course_id}/discussion_topics/{topic_id}/entries

Gateway

The two tools that make the other 1,099 endpoints reachable without a dedicated tool for each one. Together they give the server complete API reach at 17 tool schemas.

search_canvas_api

Searches all Canvas API endpoints by keyword, ranked over an embedded catalog of every operation the target Canvas instance exposes (method, path, nickname, summary, parameters). Use this to find the right endpoint for anything the curated tools don't cover, then execute it with canvas_request.

Behaviour: ranked endpoint search over the catalog, weighting nickname matches highest, then summary, then path — no network call to Canvas.

canvas_request ✏️ (for non-GET methods)

Set dry_run=true to preview the method, resolved URL, params, and body before anything reaches Canvas — this is how the write path gets verified in testing without ever submitting real data.

Behaviour: executes any endpoint the search surfaces, subject to whatever the caller's token permits. destructiveHint is set whenever method != "GET".

Prompts

Reusable multi-step workflows layered on top of the tools above — the natural seed for Agent Skills later.

Each prompt tells the model explicitly not to guess: dates, grading weights, and material coverage must come from tool results, not invention.

Resources

Read-only context the model can pull without a tool call.