Open edX MCP Plugin!

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Open edX MCP

Connect AI Assistants to Open edX Platform

Hi everyone! :waving_hand:

We’re excited to share Open edX MCP, a new open-source integration that lets MCP-compatible AI assistants securely perform administrative and course-authoring tasks on an Open edX platform.

The project works with native openedx-platform APIs and can be installed with Tutor. It does not require a core fork, proprietary service, or external identity system.

Why We Built It

While working with the LMS at Blend-ed, we kept feeling that an important connection was missing. We use AI coding harnesses throughout our own work, and we wanted the same kind of direct, practical access to our learning platform: a way to ask an AI assistant to help with everyday Open edX tasks without repeatedly switching between tools or building one-off integrations.

That led us to build an MCP interface that makes Open edX capabilities accessible to AI assistants while preserving the platform’s existing permissions, APIs, and operational safeguards.

What It Does

Open edX MCP gives authorized AI assistants tools to help administrators:

  • View courses, users, enrollments, roles, grades, and platform analytics

  • Create users and manage individual or bulk enrollments

  • Manage course staff, instructor access, and platform roles

  • Read course outlines and create or update course content in Studio

  • Update course schedules, grading policies, and advanced settings

  • Publish course blocks after reviewing the proposed change

  • Generate, regenerate, or invalidate certificates

  • Start grade and enrollment reports and retrieve their download links

  • Reset learner attempts and manage account-retirement workflows

This makes it possible to use natural-language requests such as:

Enroll these learners in the onboarding course.

Show me the enrollment numbers for all active courses.

Add a new section containing three units and publish it.

The AI assistant translates the request into scoped Open edX operations while Open edX remains the source of truth.

Built With Safety in Mind

Because these tools can perform administrative actions, safety is a central part of the design:

  • Access is limited to existing Open edX staff and superusers

  • Permissions are checked again on every request

  • Keys can be restricted with least-privilege scopes

  • Destructive actions require an additional permission

  • High-impact operations use a dry-run and confirmation workflow

  • Tools are rate-limited to reduce the impact of runaway agents

  • Every write is recorded in an append-only audit log

  • Keys can be revoked at any time from Django admin

If a user loses their Open edX staff permissions, their MCP keys stop working on the next request.

How It Works

The integration consists of two open-source packages:

  • openedx-mcp - a Django app that exposes a secure administrative facade inside the LMS and CMS

  • tutor-contrib-openedxmcp - a Tutor plugin that installs the Django app and runs the MCP server

Every operation calls native openedx-platform Python APIs. The MCP server is a small, stateless proxy, while authentication and authorization remain inside Open edX.

Availability

The initial release targets Open edX Ulmo and supports Tutor local and Kubernetes deployments.


pip install tutor-contrib-openedxmcp

tutor plugins enable openedxmcp

tutor images build openedx openedxmcp

tutor local launch

tutor local do init

After installation, create an MCP key from:

Django admin → MCP keys

You can then connect an MCP-compatible client to:


https://mcp.<LMS_HOST>/mcp

We recommend starting with a read-only key, verifying the connection with the whoami tool, and granting additional scopes only when needed.

:light_bulb: More Features Are Coming

This is the first public release, and we plan to expand the toolset with:

  • Cohort management and learner assignment

  • Richer course-team management and bulk course-team imports

  • Content-library authoring and downstream-link management

  • Certificate configuration and activation at the course level

  • Account flows such as resending activation and password-reset emails

  • Discussion and forum administration

  • Enrollment-date and course-visibility shortcuts

  • Grade overrides

  • Better MCP metrics, observability, and per-key audit views

  • Compatibility with future Open edX named releases

We’d especially value community feedback on which tools should be prioritized next.

Both projects are released under the AGPL-3.0 license.

We would love to hear your feedback, questions, and ideas, especially from operators interested in trying MCP-powered administration on their Open edX installations.

Contributions and testing are very welcome!

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