Cannot create rich mentions via MCP that e.g. render a task with a checkbox

[themightychris]

Have you read a contributing guide?

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md
• I have searched the existing issues and didn't find any that were similar
• I have considered creating a pull request with fixes instead of a bug report and want to proceed

Current Behavior

If I have my MCP write a link to a task to a page, it shows up as a plain underlined link

If I type @ to look up the same task and link it, I get a rich embed with the checkbox

To the MCP client both look exactly the same and I can't find any way to enable the MCP to create the latter

In this example, my MCP client wrote links to two tasks, and then I used @ in my Anytype client to mention the same two tasks:

Both sets of links show as the same markdown when the MCP reads, except that the ones with the rich rendering have 4 spaces after them. If the MCP tries to write 4 spaces though, 3 come back and the links lose their checkbox. There doesn't seem to be any way for the MCP to create links like the 2nd two

Expected Behavior

MCP clients have a way to create rich links, mentioning Tasks on pages so that the can render with checkboxes

Steps To Reproduce

Instruct your agent to create some tasks, and then instruct it to mention them on another page

Environment

- OS: macOS 15.6 (same when viewing on Android)
- Version: 0.53.1

MCP being run via `npx -y @anyproto/anytype-mcp` with `Anytype-Version: 2025-11-08`

Anything else?

No response

[themightychris]

I think anytime-heart would be the right repo for this?

[jonesah]

+1

I have the same issue when creating pages through the MCP and linking them to an existing page. The links property does not get updated on the existing page and in some cases seemingly gets cleared after page add. Ditto for the backlink on the new page.

And of course setting those properties explicitly does not work either

[axcornea]

I've raised a fix in anyproto/anytype-heart#2979. Until it's reviewed and published in a new release, you can try using my fix locally, instructions below (macOS only)

# Install dependencies
brew install go git make

# Clone and build the patched server
git clone --branch fix/anytype-mention-links --depth 1 https://github.com/axcornea/anytype-heart.git /tmp/anytype-heart-fix
cd /tmp/anytype-heart-fix && make build-server

# Locate the helper binary
ANYTYPE_HELPER=$(find ~/Applications /Applications -name "anytypeHelper" -path "*/Anytype*" 2>/dev/null | head -1)
echo "Found: $ANYTYPE_HELPER"

# Quit Anytype, backup, and replace
pkill -f "[Aa]nytype" 2>/dev/null; sleep 3
cp "$ANYTYPE_HELPER" "${ANYTYPE_HELPER}.bak"
cp /tmp/anytype-heart-fix/dist/server "$ANYTYPE_HELPER"

# Launch Anytype and test
open -a Anytype

# To restore original: cp "${ANYTYPE_HELPER}.bak" "$ANYTYPE_HELPER"
# Cleanup: rm -rf /tmp/anytype-heart-fix