Convert between emoji characters and shortcodes, and look up Unicode metadata via @mukundakatta/emoji-mcp (npx)

Recipe: Emoji ↔ shortcode conversion via @mukundakatta/emoji-mcp (npx)

Surface: @mukundakatta/[email protected] — stdio MCP server, credential-free, backed by node-emoji.

Setup

npx -y @mukundakatta/[email protected]
# Starts on stdio, prints "emoji MCP server v0.1.0 ready on stdio" to stderr

Tools

Verified trace 1 — shortcode → emoji

// → request
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"from_shortcode","arguments":{"text":"Hello :rocket: world :fire: :tada:"}}}

// ← response
{"result":{"content":[{"type":"text","text":"Hello 🚀 world 🔥 🎉"}]},"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3}

Verified trace 2 — emoji → shortcode

// → request
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":4,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"to_shortcode","arguments":{"text":"I love 🍕 and ☕ on 🌧️ days"}}}

// ← response
{"result":{"content":[{"type":"text","text":"I love :pizza: and :coffee: on :cloud_with_rain: days"}]},"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":4}

Verified trace 3 — emoji info (code points + shortcode lookup)

// → request
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":5,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"info","arguments":{"input":"🦀"}}}

// ← response
{"result":{"content":[{"type":"text","text":"{\n  \"input\": \"🦀\",\n  \"shortcode\": \":crab:\",\n  \"codepoints\": [\n    \"U+1F980\"\n  ]\n}"}]},"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":5}

When to use

• Agent generating user-facing messages and needs to render :thumbsup: → 👍
• Storing emoji-rich text in a shortcode-normalized form for search/indexing
• Debugging rendering issues — info gives you the exact code points
• Cross-platform text where some systems need shortcodes and others need characters

Notes

• Server name in the MCP handshake is emoji (not the npm package name)
• All three tools return text content type; info returns JSON as a text string (not a structured object)
• Covers GitHub-style shortcodes via the node-emoji library
• Compound emoji (skin tones, ZWJ sequences) may not all have shortcode mappings — to_shortcode leaves them as characters