O'RLY Book Cover Generator MCP server for AI agents

The O'RLY? MCP server lets you generate parody book covers that display directly in the Claude Desktop application. This fun tool creates customizable O'Reilly-style book covers with your chosen titles, authors, and themes.

Installation Options

Quick Setup with MCP Configuration

Add the following to your MCP configuration file:

// ... other MCP servers ...
"mcp-orly": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
        "orly-mcp@latest"
    ]
}
// ... other MCP servers ...

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add this MCP server to your Claude Desktop configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "orly-local": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--with", "fastmcp",
        "--with", "pillow",
        "--with", "fonttools",
        "--with", "requests",
        "python",
        "/path/to/your/orly-mcp/orly_mcp/server.py"
      ],
      "cwd": "/path/to/your/orly-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Important: Replace /path/to/your/orly-mcp with your actual project path.

Alternative: Package Installation

# Install in editable mode
uv pip install -e .

# Claude Desktop config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "orly-local": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "/your/path/to/orly-mcp", "orly-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Using the O'RLY Tool in Claude

Once configured, you can ask Claude to generate book covers with prompts like:

"Create an O'RLY book cover with the title 'Advanced Debugging' and author 'Jane Developer'"
"Generate a book cover titled 'Machine Learning Mistakes' with subtitle 'What Could Go Wrong?' by 'AI Enthusiast'"
"Make an O'RLY cover for 'CSS Grid Mastery' with theme 7 and image 15"

The generated book cover images will appear directly in your chat window!

Supported Parameters

title (required): Main book title
subtitle (optional): Text at the top of the cover
author (optional): Author name (bottom right)
image_code (optional): Animal/object image 1-40 (random if not specified)
theme (optional): Color theme 0-16 (random if not specified)
guide_text_placement (optional): Position of guide text - 'top_left', 'top_right', 'bottom_left', 'bottom_right'
guide_text (optional): Custom guide text (defaults to "The Definitive Guide")

Troubleshooting

"ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'mcp'" Error

If you encounter this error, the MCP dependencies aren't available:

cd /path/to/your/orly-mcp
uv pip install -r requirements.txt

Make sure your Claude Desktop configuration includes all required dependencies with --with flags.

"ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'fontTools'" Error

Ensure all dependencies are specified in your Claude Desktop configuration:

"args": [
  "run",
  "--with", "fastmcp",
  "--with", "pillow",
  "--with", "fonttools", 
  "--with", "requests",
  "python",
  "/your/path/to/orly_mcp/server.py"
]

Testing Your Setup

Run the comprehensive test to verify everything works:

uv run python test_comprehensive.py

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "mcp-orly" '{"command":"uvx","args":["orly-mcp@latest"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "mcp-orly": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "orly-mcp@latest"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "mcp-orly": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "orly-mcp@latest"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect