Give your AI 116 pairs of hands.
John's Essentials runs a live MCP server. Point any MCP-speaking client at it and all 116+ deterministic file tools — PDF, image, media, convert, analyze — appear as native tool calls. One paste, every tool. You pay your AI vendor for the brain; you pay us for the hands.
- Server URL https://api.johnsessentials.com/mcp
- Tools 116+ deterministic
- Protocol 2025-06-18
- Transports HTTP + SSE · stdio
- Auth Bearer API key
Paste a key to personalize every snippet below. It stays in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
The Cursor button installs the server instantly; if you haven't pasted a key yet, edit the token once in Cursor → Settings → MCP. Every other client is one tab away below.
Connect your AI
John's Essentials speaks the Model Context Protocol. Pick your client, paste the snippet, and all 110+ tools become native tool calls in your AI assistant.
https://api.johnsessentials.com/mcp probing~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS)
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows){
"mcpServers": {
"johns-essentials": {
"url": "https://api.johnsessentials.com/mcp/messages",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer je_live_sk_REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_KEY"
}
}
}
}Save the file and restart Claude Desktop. All 110+ tools appear in the tool picker immediately.
Why MCP? One protocol, every major AI client. You pay your AI vendor for the brain — Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Advanced — and pay us for the hands. None of your usage flows through us, none of our usage flows through them.
Every tool, correctly labelled
Each tool ships MCP annotations, so your AI client knows what it's allowed to do before it does it — read-only tools run freely, destructive ones prompt first.
Read-only
Analyzers, inspectors, validators and file reads are tagged readOnlyHint — safe to run without a confirmation prompt.
Creates output
Converters, compressors and generators produce a new file and never mutate your input — tagged non-destructive.
Destructive
Only octopus.delete carries destructiveHint, so your AI client knows to ask before it removes anything.
Under the hood
Streamable HTTP transport, spec revision 2025-06-18.
Sessions are pinned with the Mcp-Session-Id header the
server mints on initialize — but your client handles all
of that. For the curious:
/mcp/messages key JSON-RPC request → response. The main channel — tools/list, tools/call, everything./mcp/sse key Optional server→client event stream (keep-alive today; live cost events next)./mcp/health public Unauthenticated liveness probe. Returns protocol version + transports.