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.

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=10