MCP Server for LinkedIn

Disclaimer: This is an independent, community project. It is not affiliated with, authorized by, endorsed by, or sponsored by LinkedIn Corporation or Microsoft. "LinkedIn" is a registered trademark of LinkedIn Corporation and is used here only descriptively to identify the third-party service this software interoperates with.

An MCP server that lets AI assistants like Claude read LinkedIn data through your own logged-in browser session. Access profiles and companies, search for jobs, or get job details.

Sponsor

This MCP server is free and open source, supported by Unipile. It runs locally with your own browser session. Unipile is the fully managed cloud alternative: a hosted LinkedIn API for Classic, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter that handles auth, sessions, and infrastructure for you. Try it free for 7 days →

<a id="installation-methods"></a>

Installation Methods - MCP Server for LinkedIn

🚀 uvx Setup (Recommended - Universal)

Prerequisites: Install uv.

Installation

Client Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-linkedin": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-server-linkedin@latest"],
      "env": { "UV_HTTP_TIMEOUT": "300" }
    }
  }
}

The @latest tag turns on automatic updates, which keep the server working with LinkedIn's current page structure. The server starts quickly, prepares the shared Patchright Chromium browser cache in the background under ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers, and opens a LinkedIn login browser window on the first tool call that needs authentication.

AI agent? Get a quick confirmation from the user before enabling automatic updates.

[!NOTE] Early tool calls may return a setup/authentication-in-progress error until browser setup or login finishes. If you prefer to create a session explicitly, run uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --login.

uvx Setup Help

Transport Modes:

• Default (stdio): Standard communication for local MCP servers
• Streamable HTTP: For web-based MCP server
• If no transport is specified, the server defaults to stdio
• An interactive terminal without explicit transport shows a chooser prompt

CLI Options:

• --login - Open a browser to sign in and save the session
• --import-from-browser [BROWSER] - Reuse a session from a locally signed-in Chromium browser (chrome, chromium, brave, edge, arc, vivaldi, helium, yandex, whale, auto). Bare flag picks auto, the most recently used browser with a live LinkedIn session.
• --logout - Clear the stored session
• --no-headless - Show the browser window (useful for debugging)
• --log-level {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR} - Logging level (default: WARNING)
• --transport {stdio,streamable-http} - Force the transport mode (default: stdio)
• --host HOST / --port PORT / --path PATH - HTTP server address (defaults: 127.0.0.1, 8000, /mcp)
• --timeout MS - Timeout for a single page operation (default: 5000)
• --tool-timeout SECONDS - Timeout for a whole tool call (default: 180). Raise it for heavy scrapes, slow networks, or a cold-start browser.
• --login-timeout SECONDS - How long the login browser waits for you to finish signing in (default: 1800; 0 = no limit). --login-viewer ends the session after 30 minutes either way.
• --login-viewer - Docker only: show the --login browser at a token-protected URL on port 6080 (see Authentication)
• --login-inline-wait SECONDS - How long a tool call waits for a login to finish before telling the model to retry (default: 25, max 45; 0 = return at once)
• --browser-wait SECONDS - How long to wait for another server process to hand over the shared browser (default: 25, max 45; 0 = report busy at once). Only matters with several MCP clients running at once.
• --browser-min-hold SECONDS - Shortest time this process keeps the shared browser before handing it over (default: 20). Clamped to 3 seconds below --browser-wait, so raise that one along with it. Higher means fewer browser restarts but longer waits for other clients.
• --browser-idle-timeout SECONDS - Close an idle browser and release the profile after this long without a tool call (default: 600; 0 = keep it open)
• --auto-import / --no-auto-import - Import a session from a signed-in local browser on the first tool call that needs one, before falling back to manual login (default: on). Skipped in Docker, behind a proxy, and on a non-loopback HTTP bind. On macOS the keychain may prompt once.
• --user-data-dir PATH - Browser profile directory (default: ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile). Rotating or clearing a session deletes this directory and its parent, which holds the stored cookies and derived profiles.
• --claim-profile-root - Take over a profile directory the server will not claim on its own, such as one whose parent already holds other files. Needed once per directory.
• --chrome-path PATH - Path to a Chrome/Chromium executable
• --proxy-server URL - Route browser traffic through a proxy, as scheme://host:port. Set the password via PROXY_PASSWORD, which keeps it out of the process list.

Import a session from your everyday browser:

If you are already signed into LinkedIn in Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Helium, Yandex, or Naver Whale, you can skip the manual --login step and reuse that session:

# Auto-pick the most recently used browser with a live LinkedIn session
uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --import-from-browser
# Or target a specific browser
uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --import-from-browser brave

This reads the browser's LinkedIn cookies, validates them against your feed, and saves them to ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile/, the same place --login writes to. Notes:

• With several signed-in browsers, the most recently used live LinkedIn session is tried first. If LinkedIn rejects it (revoked or remote-logged-out), the next most recent is tried automatically; the first the server accepts is imported. There is no prompt to pick. Pass a browser name to target one specifically.
• On macOS the OS keychain may prompt to allow access to the browser's Safe Storage. Close the source browser first for the most reliable read.
• Cookies protected by Chrome 127+ app-bound encryption (v20) cannot be decrypted without OS elevation; in that case use --login instead.
• Imported cookies match a real login's on-disk set. The local server reads them back in full from the saved profile; the Docker bridge narrows to the same minimal auth subset it uses for a normal session.

Basic Usage Examples:

# Run with debug logging
uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --log-level DEBUG

HTTP Mode Example (for web-based MCP clients):

uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --transport streamable-http --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 --path /mcp

Runtime server logs are emitted by FastMCP/Uvicorn.

Tool calls are serialized to protect the shared LinkedIn browser session, both within one server process and across separate ones. If you run several MCP clients at once, each starts its own server process, and only one of them uses the browser at a time; the others wait briefly and take over as soon as it finishes a call. A client that waits too long gets a "browser is busy" message and can simply retry. Use --log-level DEBUG to see the wait/acquire/release logs.

This covers processes on the same machine and in the same runtime. It does not extend between the host and a Docker container sharing the same ~/.linkedin-mcp directory, so do not run --login or --logout on the host while a container is running.

Test with mcp inspector:

1. Install and run mcp inspector bunx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
2. Click pre-filled token url to open the inspector in your browser
3. Select Streamable HTTP as Transport Type
4. Set URL to http://localhost:8080/mcp
5. Connect
6. Test tools

Installation issues:

• Ensure you have uv installed: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
• Check uv version: uv --version (should be 0.4.0 or higher)
• On first run, uvx downloads all Python dependencies. On slow connections, uv's default 30s HTTP timeout may be too short. The recommended config above already sets UV_HTTP_TIMEOUT=300 (seconds) to avoid this.
• Windows, DLL load failed while importing _greenlet: move to greenlet 3.5.5 or newer, whose published Windows wheels carry the C++ runtime inside the extension again. A fresh uvx run resolves that on its own; an environment that pins its dependencies needs uv lock --upgrade-package greenlet. Only greenlet 3.3.1 through 3.5.4 need MSVCP140.dll, which neither the python.org installer nor the uv-managed builds carry, and a greenlet built from source can need it at any version. Where the version cannot be moved, the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable supplies that DLL. Reported as greenlet#525, fixed in greenlet#526.

Session issues:

• Browser profile is stored at ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile/
• Managed browser downloads are cached at ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/
• The browser cache keeps growing: a server upgrade can bring a new Chromium revision, and Patchright keeps the old one for as long as any installed version still references it. uvx keeps one archive per version you have ever run, so every one of them holds such a reference and the old revisions stay. The server logs a warning naming the revisions it is holding and how much space they take. To reclaim it, stop every LinkedIn MCP Server instance, delete ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/, and let the next launch download the current browser.
• Make sure you have only one active LinkedIn session at a time

Login issues:

• LinkedIn may require a login confirmation in the LinkedIn mobile app for --login
• LinkedIn may show a captcha challenge during login. Run uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --login which opens a browser where you can solve it manually.

Timeout issues:

• Page operations failing (elements not found, navigation hangs): increase the browser page-op timeout — --timeout 10000 or TIMEOUT=10000 (milliseconds, default 5000).
• Entire tool calls timing out (e.g. multi-section profiles, cold-start Chromium, slow containers): increase the per-tool execution timeout — --tool-timeout 300 or TOOL_TIMEOUT=300 (seconds, default 180).
• First tool call with no session: if a locally logged-in browser has a live LinkedIn session, the server auto-imports it (see AUTO_IMPORT_FROM_BROWSER / --auto-import) instead of forcing a manual login. On macOS the keychain may prompt once for Safe Storage access. If no importable browser session exists, it falls back to opening a login window and waits up to LOGIN_INLINE_WAIT seconds (default 25, max 45; --login-inline-wait) so a quick sign-in resolves in one call. If the wait elapses, the tool returns a pending signal and the model retries in about 30 seconds. Neither the auto-import nor the inline wait applies under Docker or when the server is bound to a non-loopback HTTP host. Create the session on the host with --login, or use the explicit Docker --login --login-viewer command.
• Users on slow connections may need higher values for either.

Told to run --login on the host when you already did:

• If tool calls answer "No valid LinkedIn session is available in Docker" on a machine that is not a container, the runtime was misdetected. This happened on Linux hosts running a Docker daemon for unrelated services. Set LINKEDIN_MCP_CONTAINER=false to override the detection; true forces the opposite.

Using a proxy:

Most people should not use one. LinkedIn's own guidance for reducing security challenges is to avoid a VPN or proxy, and it scores the addresses a session signs in from. A home connection you have used for years is a trust signal; a commercial exit node with a history you cannot see is not, and switching to one is itself the kind of change that triggers a checkpoint. A proxy is worth it in one case: the server runs somewhere its address is obviously a data centre, or in a different country from the account's history. Even then, a WireGuard or Tailscale exit node on your own home network beats any paid provider, because the address really is yours. If you do buy one, take a dedicated static ISP address and keep it, rather than a rotating residential pool.

• Route the browser through a proxy with --proxy-server http://host:port (http, https, socks4 and socks5 are accepted). Only browser traffic is routed, not the MCP transport.
• Credentials go in PROXY_USERNAME and PROXY_PASSWORD. There is no --proxy-password flag on purpose: command-line arguments are readable by every other user on the machine. PROXY_SERVER also accepts the combined http://user:pass@host:port form most providers hand out.
• Chromium cannot authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, so credentials require an http(s) endpoint. If your provider only offers authenticated SOCKS5, run a local relay that holds the credentials and point the server at that.
• Local addresses go through the proxy too. Chromium's usual direct route for localhost is removed when a proxy is set, so add PROXY_BYPASS=localhost,127.0.0.1,::1 if you need local targets reached directly.
• Auto-import is skipped while a proxy is configured: a session taken from a local browser was created on your real address, and moving it to the proxy is the very change that triggers a checkpoint. Use --login.
• A wrong proxy password does not report itself: Chromium retries the authentication challenge until the page times out, so it surfaces as a timeout or a failed sign-in. If sessions stop working right after you add a proxy, check the credentials before assuming the session expired.
• Set the proxy up before creating the session. Run --login with the proxy already configured. Turning a proxy on for an existing profile moves a logged-in session to a new IP, which is what triggers a LinkedIn checkpoint. The same applies to --import-from-browser, which imports a session created on your real IP. Use a sticky session, not a rotating pool, for the same reason.

Custom Chrome path:

• If Chrome is installed in a non-standard location, use --chrome-path /path/to/chrome
• Can also set via environment variable: CHROME_PATH=/path/to/chrome
• On macOS and Linux the browser must be at least as new as the one that last opened your profile, and the server refuses the launch otherwise. (Not on Windows: a browser there cannot be asked its version without starting one, so the check is off.) An older browser can silently drop stores a newer one wrote, the saved session among them, and the failure then looks exactly like an expired login. The message names both versions. Going back to the bundled Chromium after running a newer Chrome once is the usual way to meet this; either run the newer browser again, whichever one that was, or run --login, which moves the stored session aside and signs in fresh with the browser you have. --logout also clears it but discards the old session instead of keeping it recoverable, and it asks for confirmation on the terminal, so it is not usable from a server an MCP client started.
• Only Chrome, Chromium and Chrome for Testing are compared this way. Forks number themselves differently (Vivaldi is on 7.x, Edge's build number sits far below Chrome's under the same major), so pointing CHROME_PATH at one turns the check off rather than producing a refusal nothing could satisfy.

📦 Claude Desktop MCP Bundle (formerly DXT)

Prerequisites: Claude Desktop.

One-click installation for Claude Desktop users:

1. Download the latest .mcpb artifact from releases
2. Click the downloaded .mcpb file to install it into Claude Desktop
3. Call any LinkedIn tool

On startup, the MCP Bundle starts preparing the shared Patchright Chromium browser cache in the background. If you call a tool too early, Claude will surface a setup-in-progress error. On the first tool call that needs authentication, the server opens a LinkedIn login browser window and asks you to retry after sign-in.

MCP Bundle Setup Help

First-time setup behavior:

• Claude Desktop starts the bundle immediately; browser setup continues in the background
• If the Patchright Chromium browser is still downloading, retry the tool after a short wait
• Managed browser downloads are shared under ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/
• The browser cache keeps growing: Patchright keeps an old Chromium revision for as long as any installed version still references it, so an upgrade can leave both on disk. The server logs a warning naming what it holds. To reclaim the space, stop every LinkedIn MCP Server instance, delete ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/, and let the next launch download the current browser.
• Windows, the bundle exits with DLL load failed while importing _greenlet: install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, or reinstall a bundle pinning greenlet 3.5.5 or newer, whose published Windows wheels carry the C++ runtime inside the extension again. A bundle pinning greenlet 3.3.1 through 3.5.4 needs MSVCP140.dll from that redistributable, which neither the python.org installer nor the uv-managed builds carry, and a greenlet built from source can need it at any version. The server names this itself on startup, and only after checking that the loader cannot produce that DLL. Reported as greenlet#525, fixed in greenlet#526.

Login issues:

• Make sure you have only one active LinkedIn session at a time
• LinkedIn may require a login confirmation in the LinkedIn mobile app for --login
• LinkedIn may show a captcha challenge during login. Run uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --login which opens a browser where you can solve captchas manually. See the uvx setup for prerequisites.

Timeout issues:

• Page operations failing (elements not found, navigation hangs): increase the browser page-op timeout — --timeout 10000 or TIMEOUT=10000 (milliseconds, default 5000).
• Entire tool calls timing out (e.g. multi-section profiles, cold-start Chromium, slow containers): increase the per-tool execution timeout — --tool-timeout 300 or TOOL_TIMEOUT=300 (seconds, default 180).
• First tool call with no session: if a locally logged-in browser has a live LinkedIn session, the server auto-imports it (see AUTO_IMPORT_FROM_BROWSER / --auto-import) instead of forcing a manual login. On macOS the keychain may prompt once for Safe Storage access. If no importable browser session exists, it falls back to opening a login window and waits up to LOGIN_INLINE_WAIT seconds (default 25, max 45; --login-inline-wait) so a quick sign-in resolves in one call. If the wait elapses, the tool returns a pending signal and the model retries in about 30 seconds. Neither the auto-import nor the inline wait applies under Docker or when the server is bound to a non-loopback HTTP host. Create the session on the host with --login, or use the explicit Docker --login --login-viewer command.
• Users on slow connections may need higher values for either.

Told to run --login on the host when you already did:

• If tool calls answer "No valid LinkedIn session is available in Docker" on a machine that is not a container, the runtime was misdetected. This happened on Linux hosts running a Docker daemon for unrelated services. Set LINKEDIN_MCP_CONTAINER=false to override the detection; true forces the opposite.

🐳 Docker Setup

Prerequisites: Make sure Docker is installed and running.

Authentication

Log in once. The container opens a LinkedIn login browser that you drive from your own browser tab:

# Create the directory first so the container can save your session into it
mkdir -p ~/.linkedin-mcp
docker run -it --rm \
  -v ~/.linkedin-mcp:/home/pwuser/.linkedin-mcp \
  -p 127.0.0.1:6080:6080 \
  stickerdaniel/linkedin-mcp-server:latest \
  --login --login-viewer

Open the full URL the command prints (it carries the access token) and sign in. The viewer closes itself afterwards; let the command exit on its own so the session is stored completely. It gives up after 30 minutes.

Keep the -v ~/.linkedin-mcp:/home/pwuser/.linkedin-mcp mount on every later docker run, otherwise the server cannot find the session.

Configure Claude Desktop with Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-linkedin": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "--rm", "-i",
        "-v", "/absolute/path/to/.linkedin-mcp:/home/pwuser/.linkedin-mcp",
        "stickerdaniel/linkedin-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Spell that first path out in full. A client runs docker directly rather than through a shell, so a leading ~ reaches Docker unexpanded and it refuses the mount.

[!NOTE] Sessions expire over time. When tool calls start asking for authentication, repeat the login command above, or run uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --login on the host.

Docker Setup Help

Transport Modes:

• Default (stdio): Standard communication for local MCP servers
• Streamable HTTP: For a web-based MCP server
• If no transport is specified, the server defaults to stdio
• An interactive terminal without explicit transport shows a chooser prompt

CLI Options:

• --log-level {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR} - Logging level (default: WARNING)
• --transport {stdio,streamable-http} - Force the transport mode (default: stdio)
• --host HOST / --port PORT / --path PATH - HTTP server address (defaults: 127.0.0.1, 8000, /mcp)
• --logout - Clear the stored session and every profile derived from it
• --timeout MS - Timeout for a single page operation (default: 5000)
• --tool-timeout SECONDS - Timeout for a whole tool call (default: 180). Raise it for heavy scrapes, slow networks, or a cold-start browser.
• --login-timeout SECONDS - How long the login browser waits for you to finish signing in (default: 1800; 0 = no limit). --login-viewer ends the session after 30 minutes either way.
• --login-viewer - With --login, show the login browser at a token-protected URL on port 6080. Needs the profile mount from Authentication.
• --login-inline-wait SECONDS - How long a tool call waits for a login to finish before telling the model to retry (default: 25, max 45; 0 = return at once)
• --browser-wait SECONDS - How long to wait for another server process to hand over the shared browser (default: 25, max 45; 0 = report busy at once). Only matters with several MCP clients running at once.
• --browser-min-hold SECONDS - Shortest time this process keeps the shared browser before handing it over (default: 20). Clamped to 3 seconds below --browser-wait, so raise that one along with it. Higher means fewer browser restarts but longer waits for other clients.
• --browser-idle-timeout SECONDS - Close an idle browser and release the profile after this long without a tool call (default: 600; 0 = keep it open)
• --auto-import / --no-auto-import - Import a session from a signed-in local browser on the first tool call that needs one, before falling back to manual login (ignored in Docker). On macOS the keychain may prompt once.
• --user-data-dir PATH - Browser profile directory (default: ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile). Rotating or clearing a session deletes this directory and its parent, which holds the stored cookies and derived profiles.
• --claim-profile-root - Take over a profile directory the server will not claim on its own, such as one whose parent already holds other files. Needed once per directory.
• --chrome-path PATH - Path to a Chrome/Chromium executable (rarely needed in Docker)
• --proxy-server URL - Route browser traffic through a proxy, as scheme://host:port. Set the password via PROXY_PASSWORD, which keeps it out of the process list.

[!NOTE] Plain --login still has no visible window in Docker. Add --login-viewer and publish 127.0.0.1:6080:6080 only for the one-shot login command. Docker is already headed by default, so --no-headless changes nothing. The experimental --daemon is ignored in Docker because its owner can outlive the virtual display.

HTTP Mode Example (for web-based MCP clients):

docker run -it --rm \
  -v ~/.linkedin-mcp:/home/pwuser/.linkedin-mcp \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \
  stickerdaniel/linkedin-mcp-server:latest \
  --transport streamable-http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080 --path /mcp

Both halves of that are needed, and they do different jobs. --host 0.0.0.0 makes the server reachable inside the container: a process bound to 127.0.0.1 in there cannot be reached through a published port at all. The 127.0.0.1: in front of -p is what limits it outside, to this machine. Drop that prefix and Docker publishes on every interface, which puts an endpoint with no authentication on your network. The server cannot tell the two apart, so it warns either way.

Loopback publishing limits this to the machine, not to the container. Other containers on the same host can still reach it through host.docker.internal wherever that name resolves, which is the default on Docker Desktop and OrbStack but not on native Linux Docker.

Runtime server logs are emitted by FastMCP/Uvicorn.

The HTTP server answers requests addressed to localhost or to the address it is bound to, and refuses others with 421. That is what stops a website you merely visit from pointing a domain at this server and using your LinkedIn session through your own browser.

Reaching the server by any other name is refused, including a machine name on your network and the public name in front of a reverse proxy. Either have the proxy rewrite the upstream Host to the backend address, or name the host you serve it under:

FASTMCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_HOSTS='["mcp.example"]'

That permits exactly that name and keeps refusing everything else. The endpoint still has no authentication, so anything reachable beyond your own machine belongs behind something that provides it.

Test with mcp inspector:

1. Install and run mcp inspector bunx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
2. Click pre-filled token url to open the inspector in your browser
3. Select Streamable HTTP as Transport Type
4. Set URL to http://localhost:8080/mcp
5. Connect
6. Test tools

Docker issues:

• Make sure Docker is installed
• Check if Docker is running: docker ps
• Permission errors on ~/.linkedin-mcp: an older rootful Docker run may have created the directory as root. Fix it with sudo chown -R "$(id -u):$(id -g)" ~/.linkedin-mcp.

Login issues:

• Make sure you have only one active LinkedIn session at a time
• LinkedIn may require a login confirmation in the LinkedIn mobile app for --login
• LinkedIn may show a captcha challenge during login. Run uvx mcp-server-linkedin@latest --login which opens a browser where you can solve captchas manually. See the uvx setup for prerequisites.
• If Docker auth becomes stale after you re-login on the host, restart Docker once so it can fresh-bridge from the new source session generation.

Timeout issues:

• Page operations failing (elements not found, navigation hangs): increase the browser page-op timeout — --timeout 10000 or TIMEOUT=10000 (milliseconds, default 5000).
• Entire tool calls timing out (e.g. multi-section profiles, cold-start Chromium, slow containers): increase the per-tool execution timeout — --tool-timeout 300 or TOOL_TIMEOUT=300 (seconds, default 180).
• First tool call with no session: if a locally logged-in browser has a live LinkedIn session, the server auto-imports it (see AUTO_IMPORT_FROM_BROWSER / --auto-import) instead of forcing a manual login. On macOS the keychain may prompt once for Safe Storage access. If no importable browser session exists, it falls back to opening a login window and waits up to LOGIN_INLINE_WAIT seconds (default 25, max 45; --login-inline-wait) so a quick sign-in resolves in one call. If the wait elapses, the tool returns a pending signal and the model retries in about 30 seconds. Neither the auto-import nor the inline wait applies under Docker or when the server is bound to a non-loopback HTTP host. Create the session on the host with --login, or use the explicit Docker --login --login-viewer command.
• Users on slow connections may need higher values for either.

Told to run --login on the host when you already did:

• If tool calls answer "No valid LinkedIn session is available in Docker" on a machine that is not a container, the runtime was misdetected. This happened on Linux hosts running a Docker daemon for unrelated services. Set LINKEDIN_MCP_CONTAINER=false to override the detection; true forces the opposite.

Using a proxy:

Most people should not use one. LinkedIn's own guidance for reducing security challenges is to avoid a VPN or proxy, and it scores the addresses a session signs in from. A home connection you have used for years is a trust signal; a commercial exit node with a history you cannot see is not, and switching to one is itself the kind of change that triggers a checkpoint. A proxy is worth it in one case: the server runs somewhere its address is obviously a data centre, or in a different country from the account's history. Even then, a WireGuard or Tailscale exit node on your own home network beats any paid provider, because the address really is yours. If you do buy one, take a dedicated static ISP address and keep it, rather than a rotating residential pool.

• Route the browser through a proxy with --proxy-server http://host:port (http, https, socks4 and socks5 are accepted). Only browser traffic is routed, not the MCP transport.
• Credentials go in PROXY_USERNAME and PROXY_PASSWORD. There is no --proxy-password flag on purpose: command-line arguments are readable by every other user on the machine. PROXY_SERVER also accepts the combined http://user:pass@host:port form most providers hand out.
• Chromium cannot authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, so credentials require an http(s) endpoint. If your provider only offers authenticated SOCKS5, run a local relay that holds the credentials and point the server at that.
• Local addresses go through the proxy too. Chromium's usual direct route for localhost is removed when a proxy is set, so add PROXY_BYPASS=localhost,127.0.0.1,::1 if you need local targets reached directly.
• Auto-import is skipped while a proxy is configured: a session taken from a local browser was created on your real address, and moving it to the proxy is the very change that triggers a checkpoint. Use --login.
• A wrong proxy password does not report itself: Chromium retries the authentication challenge until the page times out, so it surfaces as a timeout or a failed sign-in. If sessions stop working right after you add a proxy, check the credentials before assuming the session expired.
• Set the proxy up before creating the session. Run --login with the proxy already configured. Turning a proxy on for an existing profile moves a logged-in session to a new IP, which is what triggers a LinkedIn checkpoint. The same applies to --import-from-browser, which imports a session created on your real IP. Use a sticky session, not a rotating pool, for the same reason.

Custom Chrome path:

• If Chrome is installed in a non-standard location, use --chrome-path /path/to/chrome
• Can also set via environment variable: CHROME_PATH=/path/to/chrome
• On macOS and Linux the browser must be at least as new as the one that last opened your profile, and the server refuses the launch otherwise. (Not on Windows: a browser there cannot be asked its version without starting one, so the check is off.) An older browser can silently drop stores a newer one wrote, the saved session among them, and the failure then looks exactly like an expired login. The message names both versions. Going back to the bundled Chromium after running a newer Chrome once is the usual way to meet this; either run the newer browser again, whichever one that was, or run --login, which moves the stored session aside and signs in fresh with the browser you have. --logout also clears it but discards the old session instead of keeping it recoverable, and it asks for confirmation on the terminal, so it is not usable from a server an MCP client started.
• Only Chrome, Chromium and Chrome for Testing are compared this way. Forks number themselves differently (Vivaldi is on 7.x, Edge's build number sits far below Chrome's under the same major), so pointing CHROME_PATH at one turns the check off rather than producing a refusal nothing could satisfy.
• In the documented Docker setup this check does not apply. The container never opens the profile you created with --login; it derives its own from your cookies, and by default rebuilds that from scratch on every start, so there is nothing for an older image to downgrade. With EXPERIMENTAL_PERSIST_DERIVED_RUNTIME the derived profile is kept, and an image tag that moves backwards then throws it away and re-derives it, again with nothing for you to do. The check matters on the host, where the server opens that profile directly. Not during --login itself, which moves the old profile aside before it starts a browser and so can never trip it.

🐍 Local Setup (Develop & Contribute)

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for architecture guidelines and checklists. Please open an issue first to discuss the feature or bug fix before submitting a PR.

Prerequisites: Git and uv installed

Installation

# 1. Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/stickerdaniel/linkedin-mcp-server
cd linkedin-mcp-server

# 2. Install UV package manager (if not already installed)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# 3. Install dependencies
uv sync
uv sync --group dev

# 4. Install pre-commit hooks
uv run pre-commit install

# 5. Start the server
uv run -m linkedin_mcp_server

The local server uses the same managed-runtime flow as MCPB and uvx: it prepares the Patchright Chromium browser cache in the background and opens LinkedIn login on the first auth-requiring tool call. You can still run uv run -m linkedin_mcp_server --login when you want to create the session explicitly.

Local Setup Help

CLI Options:

• --login - Open a browser to sign in and save the session
• --import-from-browser [BROWSER] - Reuse a session from a locally signed-in Chromium browser (chrome, chromium, brave, edge, arc, vivaldi, helium, yandex, whale, auto). Bare flag picks auto, the most recently used browser with a live LinkedIn session.
• --status - Check whether the stored session is valid, then exit
• --logout - Clear the stored session
• --no-headless - Show the browser window (useful for debugging)
• --log-level {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR} - Logging level (default: WARNING)
• --transport {stdio,streamable-http} - Force the transport mode (default: stdio)
• --host HOST / --port PORT / --path PATH - HTTP server address (defaults: 127.0.0.1, 8000, /mcp)
• --timeout MS - Timeout for a single page operation (default: 5000)
• --tool-timeout SECONDS - Timeout for a whole tool call (default: 180). Raise it for heavy scrapes, slow networks, or a cold-start browser.
• --user-data-dir PATH - Browser profile directory (default: ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile). Rotating or clearing a session deletes this directory and its parent, which holds the stored cookies and derived profiles.
• --claim-profile-root - Take over a profile directory the server will not claim on its own, such as one whose parent already holds other files. Needed once per directory.
• --slow-mo MS - Delay between browser actions (default: 0, useful for debugging)
• --viewport WxH - Viewport size (default: 1280x720). Applies to windowless mode only; a headed launch uses the real window size.
• --chrome-path PATH - Path to a Chrome/Chromium executable
• --proxy-server URL - Route browser traffic through a proxy, as scheme://host:port. Set the password via PROXY_PASSWORD, which keeps it out of the process list.
• --help - Show help

Note: Most CLI options have environment variable equivalents. See .env.example for details.

HTTP Mode Example (for web-based MCP clients):

uv run -m linkedin_mcp_server --transport streamable-http --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000 --path /mcp

Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-linkedin": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/linkedin-mcp-server", "run", "-m", "linkedin_mcp_server"]
    }
  }
}

stdio is used by default for this config.

Login issues:

• Make sure you have only one active LinkedIn session at a time
• LinkedIn may require a login confirmation in the LinkedIn mobile app for --login
• LinkedIn may show a captcha challenge during login. The --login command opens a browser where you can solve it manually.

Scraping issues:

• Use --no-headless to see browser actions and debug scraping problems
• Add --log-level DEBUG to see more detailed logging

Session issues:

• Browser profile is stored at ~/.linkedin-mcp/profile/
• Managed browser downloads are cached at ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/, shared with the uvx and MCP Bundle installations
• The browser cache keeps growing: Patchright keeps an old Chromium revision for as long as any installed version still references it, and a uv archive or a second worktree is such a reference. The server logs a warning naming what it holds. To reclaim the space, stop every LinkedIn MCP Server instance, delete ~/.linkedin-mcp/patchright-browsers/, and let the next launch download the current browser.
• Use --logout to clear the profile and start fresh

Python/Patchright issues:

• Check Python version: python --version (should be 3.12+)
• Reinstall Patchright: uv run patchright install chromium
• Reinstall dependencies: uv sync --reinstall

Timeout issues:

• Page operations failing (elements not found, navigation hangs): increase the browser page-op timeout — --timeout 10000 or TIMEOUT=10000 (milliseconds, default 5000).
• Entire tool calls timing out (e.g. multi-section profiles, cold-start Chromium, slow containers): increase the per-tool execution timeout — --tool-timeout 300 or TOOL_TIMEOUT=300 (seconds, default 180).
• First tool call with no session: if a locally logged-in browser has a live LinkedIn session, the server auto-imports it (see AUTO_IMPORT_FROM_BROWSER / --auto-import) instead of forcing a manual login. On macOS the keychain may prompt once for Safe Storage access. If no importable browser session exists, it falls back to opening a login window and waits up to LOGIN_INLINE_WAIT seconds (default 25, max 45; --login-inline-wait) so a quick sign-in resolves in one call. If the wait elapses, the tool returns a pending signal and the model retries in about 30 seconds. Neither the auto-import nor the inline wait applies under Docker or when the server is bound to a non-loopback HTTP host. Create the session on the host with --login, or use the explicit Docker --login --login-viewer command.
• Users on slow connections may need higher values for either.

Told to run --login on the host when you already did:

• If tool calls answer "No valid LinkedIn session is available in Docker" on a machine that is not a container, the runtime was misdetected. This happened on Linux hosts running a Docker daemon for unrelated services. Set LINKEDIN_MCP_CONTAINER=false to override the detection; true forces the opposite.

Using a proxy:

Most people should not use one. LinkedIn's own guidance for reducing security challenges is to avoid a VPN or proxy, and it scores the addresses a session signs in from. A home connection you have used for years is a trust signal; a commercial exit node with a history you cannot see is not, and switching to one is itself the kind of change that triggers a checkpoint. A proxy is worth it in one case: the server runs somewhere its address is obviously a data centre, or in a different country from the account's history. Even then, a WireGuard or Tailscale exit node on your own home network beats any paid provider, because the address really is yours. If you do buy one, take a dedicated static ISP address and keep it, rather than a rotating residential pool.

• Route the browser through a proxy with --proxy-server http://host:port (http, https, socks4 and socks5 are accepted). Only browser traffic is routed, not the MCP transport.
• Credentials go in PROXY_USERNAME and PROXY_PASSWORD. There is no --proxy-password flag on purpose: command-line arguments are readable by every other user on the machine. PROXY_SERVER also accepts the combined http://user:pass@host:port form most providers hand out.
• Chromium cannot authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, so credentials require an http(s) endpoint. If your provider only offers authenticated SOCKS5, run a local relay that holds the credentials and point the server at that.
• Local addresses go through the proxy too. Chromium's usual direct route for localhost is removed when a proxy is set, so add PROXY_BYPASS=localhost,127.0.0.1,::1 if you need local targets reached directly.
• Auto-import is skipped while a proxy is configured: a session taken from a local browser was created on your real address, and moving it to the proxy is the very change that triggers a checkpoint. Use --login.
• A wrong proxy password does not report itself: Chromium retries the authentication challenge until the page times out, so it surfaces as a timeout or a failed sign-in. If sessions stop working right after you add a proxy, check the credentials before assuming the session expired.
• Set the proxy up before creating the session. Run --login with the proxy already configured. Turning a proxy on for an existing profile moves a logged-in session to a new IP, which is what triggers a LinkedIn checkpoint. The same applies to --import-from-browser, which imports a session created on your real IP. Use a sticky session, not a rotating pool, for the same reason.

Custom Chrome path:

• If Chrome is installed in a non-standard location, use --chrome-path /path/to/chrome
• Can also set via environment variable: CHROME_PATH=/path/to/chrome
• On macOS and Linux the browser must be at least as new as the one that last opened your profile, and the server refuses the launch otherwise. (Not on Windows: a browser there cannot be asked its version without starting one, so the check is off.) An older browser can silently drop stores a newer one wrote, the saved session among them, and the failure then looks exactly like an expired login. The message names both versions. Going back to the bundled Chromium after running a newer Chrome once is the usual way to meet this; either run the newer browser again, whichever one that was, or run --login, which moves the stored session aside and signs in fresh with the browser you have. --logout also clears it but discards the old session instead of keeping it recoverable, and it asks for confirmation on the terminal, so it is not usable from a server an MCP client started.
• Only Chrome, Chromium and Chrome for Testing are compared this way. Forks number themselves differently (Vivaldi is on 7.x, Edge's build number sits far below Chrome's under the same major), so pointing CHROME_PATH at one turns the check off rather than producing a refusal nothing could satisfy.

[!IMPORTANT] FAQ

Is this safe to use? Will I get banned? This tool controls a real browser session; it doesn't exploit undocumented APIs or bypass authentication. LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits automated access, and accounts using automated tools can be restricted or banned. Use at your own risk; there is no guarantee of account safety. If you encounter any issues, let me know in the Discussions.

What if my agents execute too many actions? Tool calls run sequentially through a queue. You are responsible for the volume of automation you run; use it sparingly and prompt your agents responsibly.

Acknowledgements

Built with FastMCP and Patchright.

Use in accordance with LinkedIn's User Agreement. Automated access may violate LinkedIn's terms and can lead to account restrictions. This tool is for personal use only and comes with no warranty of any kind.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Building on it is welcome, including under a different license. Apache-2.0 attaches conditions to that, set out in section 4 of the license. The one most often missed is that the attribution in NOTICE has to travel with what you ship.