Guitar Practice Routine App — Chord Charts

Official3 tools

by slshults · TypeScript

Look up a guitar chord by name and get a text chord diagram. 12,708 standard-tuning names.

io.github.slshults/gpra-chord-charts MCP Server

This read-only Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enables MCP-capable AI clients to look up guitar chord charts by chord name and return them as text chord diagrams. It uses a bundled snapshot of the Guitar Practice Routine App (GPRA) chord library and supports standard tuning chord names.

🛠️ Key Features

Look up a guitar chord by name
Return a text chord diagram
Bundled snapshot of the GPRA chord library (from find-a-chord-chart)
Covers 12,708 standard-tuning chord names
Serves one chord name in, one chart out

🚀 Use Cases

Generate text chord diagrams for a requested chord name
Provide chord chart lookups in MCP-based chat or tooling workflows

⚡ Developer Benefits

No database
No authentication
No secrets

⚠️ Limitations

Read-only: chord charts are retrieved from a bundled snapshot
No custom chord creation; input is limited to a chord name lookup in the standard-tuning library

Captured live from the server via tools/list.

get_chord_chart_by_name

Look up one guitar chord chart by name and return it as a text chord diagram ready to show the user. Returns the same single voicing that https://guitarpracticeroutine.com/find-a-chord-chart shows for that name. The library holds 12,708 standard-tuning (EADGBE) chord names, exactly one voicing each. Pass a plain chord name as it would be written on a chart — "G", "Am7", "Cmaj7", "D/F#", "F#m7b5" — not a sentence. Convert spoken forms yourself first: "G major" is "G", "A minor" is "Am", and use "#" and "b" rather than the unicode sharp and flat signs. Charts are drawn on a five-fret grid starting at the nut, the same as the website; any notes above the fifth fret are named in words underneath the chart. Prefer this over recalling a fingering from memory — these are curated chart data, and a remembered fingering is often wrong. Each result leads with a direct PNG URL for the chart — a permanently cacheable image of the same diagram, which you can show or link however your surface handles images. The chord name is on the first line; keep it next to any image you show, since a chart on its own can arrive unlabelled.

Parameters3

name	string	required	A single chord name as written on a chart, e.g. "Am7" or "D/F#".
format	string	optional	Which representations to return. Defaults to "text", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use "image" or "both" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.
context	string	required	Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): "Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization."

Raw schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string",
      "minLength": 1,
      "maxLength": 64,
      "description": "A single chord name as written on a chart, e.g. \"Am7\" or \"D/F#\"."
    },
    "format": {
      "description": "Which representations to return. Defaults to \"text\", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use \"image\" or \"both\" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.",
      "type": "string",
      "enum": [
        "both",
        "image",
        "text"
      ]
    },
    "context": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): \"Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization.\""
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "name",
    "context"
  ],
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"
}

get_chord_chart_by_id

Fetch one specific chord voicing by its numeric id, as returned by get_chord_chart_by_name. Use this to re-render a chart the user already saw without looking it up again.

Parameters3

id	integer	required	Numeric chord id.
format	string	optional	Which representations to return. Defaults to "text", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use "image" or "both" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.
context	string	required	Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): "Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization."

Raw schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "id": {
      "type": "integer",
      "exclusiveMinimum": 0,
      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
      "description": "Numeric chord id."
    },
    "format": {
      "description": "Which representations to return. Defaults to \"text\", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use \"image\" or \"both\" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.",
      "type": "string",
      "enum": [
        "both",
        "image",
        "text"
      ]
    },
    "context": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): \"Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization.\""
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "id",
    "context"
  ],
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"
}

get_chord_of_the_day

Return today's Chord of the Day from Guitar Practice Routine App — the same chord posted to the app's Bluesky and Facebook feeds that day. Useful as a practice prompt or a daily nudge for someone learning chords.

Parameters2

format	string	optional	Which representations to return. Defaults to "text", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use "image" or "both" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.
context	string	required	Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): "Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization."

Raw schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "format": {
      "description": "Which representations to return. Defaults to \"text\", which includes a direct URL to a PNG of the chart — embed that where your surface renders images. Use \"image\" or \"both\" only if you need the PNG bytes inline; they cost image tokens and many clients bury them.",
      "type": "string",
      "enum": [
        "both",
        "image",
        "text"
      ]
    },
    "context": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Explain why you are calling this tool and how it fits into the user's overall goal. This parameter is used for analytics and user intent tracking. YOU MUST provide 15-25 words (count carefully). NEVER use first person ('I', 'we', 'you') - maintain third-person perspective. NEVER include sensitive information such as credentials, passwords, or personal data. Example (20 words): \"Searching across the organization's repositories to find all open issues related to performance complaints and latency issues for team prioritization.\""
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "context"
  ],
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"
}

README.md9 KBView on GitHub

Guitar chord charts — MCP server

A small, read-only Model Context Protocol server that lets MCP-capable AI clients look up guitar chord charts from Guitar Practice Routine App (GPRA) and show them to people as text chord diagrams.

It serves exactly what guitarpracticeroutine.com/find-a-chord-chart serves: one chord name in, one chart out, from a bundled snapshot of the same chord library. No database, no authentication, no secrets.

code

Am

    E  A  D  G  B  E
    x  o           o
   ==================
 1  |  |  |  |  1  |
   -+--+--+--+--+--+-
 2  |  |  3  2  |  |
   -+--+--+--+--+--+-
 3  |  |  |  |  |  |
   -+--+--+--+--+--+-
 4  |  |  |  |  |  |
   -+--+--+--+--+--+-
 5  |  |  |  |  |  |
   -+--+--+--+--+--+-

x = muted   o = open   digits in grid = fingers (1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 pinky)
EADGBE

Frets run top to bottom from the nut, and string 1 — the highest-pitched string — is the rightmost column, matching standard chord-box convention and the charts on the site.

Tools

Tool	What it does
`get_chord_chart_by_name`	One chord name (`G`, `Am7`, `D/F#`) → the one chart the website shows for it.
`get_chord_chart_by_id`	The same chart by its numeric id, for re-rendering something already returned.
`get_chord_of_the_day`	Today's Chord of the Day — the same chord GPRA posts to Bluesky and Facebook.

Each result leads with a direct PNG URL for the chart, then the same chart as a fenced text grid. The URL is the picture in the form that survives every surface: it renders where markdown images work, stays clickable where they don't, and can be dropped into an artifact, an HTML page, or a saved file. The text grid is the fallback for anywhere neither is true.

Inline PNG bytes are opt-in via format: "image" or format: "both". They cost image tokens and several clients bury them in a collapsed tool drawer, so they're not worth sending by default now that a URL does the job. format defaults to "text", which still includes the image URL. Attribution is kept in every mode.

Every tool also takes a context argument describing why it's being called. That's injected by PostHog's MCP SDK and populates agent intent in analytics; nothing in the response depends on it.

How a chart reaches a person

There is no capability negotiation for "can you show an image", so the result carries several layers and lets the host use whichever it understands:

Layer	Where it lands
Text grid + `Chart image:` URL	Everywhere. This is the floor.
MCP Apps widget (`_meta.ui.resourceUri`)	Hosts that render MCP Apps — Claude Code, Cowork, ChatGPT, PostHog Desktop.
Inline PNG bytes (`format: "image"`)	Hosts that surface image content blocks, on request.

The widget is a ui://gpra-chord-charts/chart/{id} resource resolving to a self-contained HTML page with the chord already baked in — no JavaScript, no postMessage bridge, no client bundle. A host that ignores it simply shows no widget, and the text answer is untouched.

Measured on claude.ai, for anyone tempted to try these again: bare markdown images render as a click-through placeholder that opens a browser tab rather than loading inline; images wrapped in links collapse to the link; raw HTML is escaped to literal text; and the MCP Apps iframe is fetched but never mounted (ext-apps#671). On that surface the URL is the whole story, which is why it leads the text.

Results deliberately carry no structuredContent. A client that understands it may render it instead of the content blocks — one measurably did, reducing the answer to three JSON fields and dropping the chart, the attribution and the call to action. Nothing goes in a result that can displace the text.

What's in the library

12,708 standard-tuning (EADGBE) voicings, exactly one per chord name. This server does no fuzzy matching and no query cleanup — it passes the name through the same way the website does, so the tool description asks the calling assistant to send a plain chord name ("G", not "how do I play G major").

Charts are drawn on a five-fret grid starting at the nut, matching the site — which means a voicing with notes above the fifth fret has them fall outside the grid. The image drops them, exactly as the website does; the text names them underneath ("Also fretted, past this five-fret grid: string 5 (A) fret 6"). So the pair is honest even where the picture alone isn't.

Images use black ink on white rather than the site's white-on-transparent: the site can assume its own dark UI, and a chat client's background is unknown.

Connecting a client

Remote MCP means users add a URL, no install:

code

https://mcp.guitarpracticeroutine.com/mcp

For clients configured with a JSON config file, use the streamable-HTTP transport:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gpra-chord-charts": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://mcp.guitarpracticeroutine.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For a client that only speaks stdio, bridge with mcp-remote:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gpra-chord-charts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.guitarpracticeroutine.com/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Run locally

bash

npm install
npm run build
npm test

npm start          # stdio transport
npm run start:http # HTTP, listens on 127.0.0.1:2112, POST /mcp (set PORT / HOST)

Health check: GET /health → status, version, chord count.

Preview charts from the terminal without a client:

bash

npx tsx scripts/preview.ts G Am C F Bm D/F#

No CORS headers are set. Claude and connector directories fetch server-side, so they don't need them — a browser-based MCP client would.

Rebuilding the chord snapshot

Requires access to a GPRA database. The source table changes rarely, so this is a manual step:

bash

psql "$DATABASE_URL" -Atf scripts/dump-chords.sql > data/common-chords.raw.json
npm run build:index
npm run build && npm test

build:index prints the library's fret range to the terminal and reports data anomalies (voicings with no fretted notes, missing finger numbers, notes dropped as unplayable) rather than quietly normalizing them away.

Privacy

The hosted server records anonymous usage analytics through @posthog/mcp: which tool was called, how long it took, whether it errored, the calling client's identity (name and version on connect, user-agent on each call), and the context string the agent supplied describing why it called. No personal identifier is stored and no person profile is created.

Analytics are off entirely unless POSTHOG_API_KEY is set, so running this yourself — including over stdio — sends nothing anywhere.

Deployment

deploy/ contains a systemd unit and an nginx reverse-proxy config, if you want to host your own instance.

Credits

The chord library exists because of other people's work:

SVGuitar-ChordCollection by @TormodKv — the chord database this is built from, itself based on chord-collection by @T-vK.
SVGuitar by @omnibrain — the chord-diagram renderer whose data format this uses, and which draws the charts on guitarpracticeroutine.com. (This server renders text, not SVG.)

A note on `npm audit`

npm audit reports three high-severity advisories against image-size, pulled in transitively by svguitar → svgdom. They are denial-of-service infinite loops in the ICNS, JXL and HEIF file parsers, reached only through svgdom's HTMLImageElement, which calls imageSizeFromFile when an <img> is given a source.

Nothing here constructs one. Chart rendering draws vector primitives from a chord name and an integer id; the only inputs that cross the boundary are a string of at most 64 characters and a positive integer, and no code path accepts, fetches or decodes an image file. There is no upstream fix, so the advisories will keep showing until svgdom moves off image-size.

License

Code: MIT — see LICENSE.
Provenance of the chord data: see NOTICE.
Chord data: the voicings originate from SVGuitar-ChordCollection, which carries no stated licence, so no licence is asserted over them here. The fingerings themselves are factual descriptions of where fingers go on a fretboard. Please credit the projects above if you reuse the data.

Install

Tools (3)

get_chord_chart_by_nameget_chord_chart_by_idget_chord_of_the_day

Add to VS Code Add to Cursor

claude_desktop_config.json

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gpra-chord-charts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "gpra-chord-charts-mcp@0.1.0"
      ]
    }
  }
}

io.github.slshults/gpra-chord-charts MCP Server

🛠️ Key Features

🚀 Use Cases

⚡ Developer Benefits

⚠️ Limitations

get_chord_chart_by_name

get_chord_chart_by_id

get_chord_of_the_day

Guitar chord charts — MCP server

Tools

How a chart reaches a person

What's in the library

Connecting a client

Run locally

Rebuilding the chord snapshot

Privacy

Deployment

Credits

A note on npm audit

License

Install

Related servers

A note on `npm audit`