wtf is affinity-creative-mcp?

Affinity Creative MCP is a local automation bridge for Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher, three design applications owned by Canva. It lets an external client program (such as Codex) control those applications through a defined set of safe, pre-built commands. The project is unofficial and has no affiliation with Canva or the Affinity team. The server runs only on macOS, requires Affinity 3 (tested against version 3.2.0), and needs Node.js 22.7.5 or newer. It works by connecting to Affinity's built-in local network connector and exposing a fixed set of tools for creating documents, editing layers, replacing text, and exporting files. The author deliberately does not expose Affinity's raw scripting capability, which keeps operations restricted to what the provided tools can validate. The tools cover several areas. You can launch Affinity, create and open documents, inspect their dimensions, and save them. For editing, the server supports listing and selecting layers, adding shapes and text, placing images, applying basic visual effects like blur or exposure, and undoing the last action. A notable feature is guarded text replacement: the server first previews every match along with a fingerprint of the text state, then applies the replacement only if nothing has changed in between. This preview-then-apply pattern extends to batch replacement across up to 20 open documents, with automatic rollback if a later replacement fails. Exports include PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG, PDF, EPS, PSD, and WebP formats. The server stages exports on the Desktop because Affinity limits file access to that location, then copies the result to the requested destination without overwriting existing files. The same staging approach applies to new documents, since Affinity 3.2's SDK cannot reliably close files on its own. The README includes setup instructions, installation from source, and Codex configuration details. The automated test suite covers schemas, string escaping, guard logic, timeout behavior, batch rollback, and path containment. The full README is longer than what was shown.