Ten minutes, and the last one is the reason to bother.
1. Install the CLI
The MCP server lives inside it.
brew tap screenly/screenly-cli
brew install screenly-cli2. Get a token
Workspace Settings, then Security, then Tokens. It is shown once. See API tokens.
Use a token from an account with the access you want the assistant to have, not necessarily your own. See Permissions.
3. Connect a client
In Claude Desktop, install the Screenly extension and paste the token. It goes into your operating system keychain rather than a config file. See Connect a client for where to get the bundle.
For Cursor and others, the JSON is in Connect a client.
Then ask it these three
Something you would have had to look up
“Which screens are offline, and how long have they been down?”
One call and some filtering. In the dashboard this is a sort and a scan; here it is a sentence, and the answer comes back as prose you can paste into a ticket.
Something you would have clicked forty times
“Find every screen labeled warehouse and assign the Safety Rotation playlist to them.”
This is where it stops being a novelty. Labels are the assistant’s lever on a fleet, exactly as they are yours, and label_link_playlist does in one call what forty clicks would.
Scope requests to a label rather than to everything. The blast radius of a misunderstood instruction is then one group.
Something that did not exist a minute ago
“Build me a dashboard showing our four production lines, and upload it as a Screenly app.”
The assistant writes the page, then edge_app_publish_from_html wraps it for unattended playback, creates an instance, and deploys it. It lands in your Content library ready for a playlist.
That is the one that has no dashboard equivalent at all. See Publish HTML as an app.
What it will not do
There is no tool to pair a screen, change screen settings, or edit an app’s configuration, so an assistant cannot do those however it is asked. Screens are read-only. See Tool reference.
Before you let it loose
Scope the token. It inherits the account’s access exactly.
Turn on confirmations if your client offers them. Every destructive tool is annotated, so a client can ask before deleting a playlist.
Check Now playing. A screen’s own page shows what is actually active on it, which is the fastest way to confirm the assistant did what you meant. See A screen’s own page.