api-canvas

api-canvas is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from cyanheads/shift-mcp-server. It costs 85 tokens per session (7,799 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of api-canvas, Apache-2.0.

A DuckDB-backed workspace for registering tabular data, querying multiple tables with SQL, and exporting results as CSV, Parquet, or JSON. DuckDB is a database designed for analytical queries.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for aggregations, grouping, joins, time-based filters, ad-hoc analysis, and exporting query results when the optional canvas feature is enabled.
Why use it?
It gives an agent a place to combine and analyze structured results from upstream APIs instead of handling each response separately.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the shift-mcp-server plugin — 32 skills, 1 MCP server shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server/api-canvas
Any agent
npx skills add cyanheads/shift-mcp-server --skill api-canvas
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install shift-mcp-server, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for api-canvas

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server/api-canvas.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server/api-canvas)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server/api-canvas"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cyanheads/shift-mcp-server/api-canvas.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 85 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,799 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00085 $0.07799
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.03900
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.01560
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00780

Measured 4d ago against content hash a15da8c76763, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-canvas scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to api-canvas — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/api-canvas/SKILL.md · 556 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 556 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Overview

DataCanvas is a primitive for storage stashes, canvas computes. The existing IStorageProvider is a key/value abstraction — it can stash blobs but exposes no analytical surface. DataCanvas is the analytical surface: register tabular data from upstream APIs, run SQL across multiple registered tables, and export results as CSV/Parquet/JSON.

Tier 3@duckdb/node-api is an optional peer dependency (bun add @duckdb/node-api). Servers that don't enable canvas pay zero install cost. Lazy-loaded on first use.

Disabled by default. Set CANVAS_PROVIDER_TYPE=duckdb to enable. Otherwise core.canvas is undefined.

Cloudflare Workers: unsupported. DuckDB has no V8-isolate build. Setting CANVAS_PROVIDER_TYPE=duckdb on a Worker fails closed with a ConfigurationError at init time.


When canvas earns its keep

Two gates before wiring canvas in — both must be yes. Canvas that fails either is a SQL surface nobody queries.

  1. Is the data analytical, not just large? Canvas is for tabular/numeric result sets an agent runs SQL over — aggregate, group, join, time-series filter. A discovery/search surface returning categorical metadata (titles, IDs, types, dates) where the workflow is find the record, then drill into it does not qualify, regardless of row count. A 5,000-row search result is still discovery. The gate is shape, not size: the right question is "would an agent write SELECT … GROUP BY against this?", not "does it have many rows?" For name→ID resolution over a bounded list, reach for MCP-side list filtering (see the design-mcp-server skill) instead.
  2. Is it too big to inline? A result that fits the response (≤ ~100 rows of compact data) just gets inlined — no canvas. Canvas is the third option only when shape and size both call for it.

If canvas earns its keep, it carries an obligation: a tool that emits a canvas_id MUST ship a dataframe_query tool in the same server's surface (see the simple-shape Tools row and the Checklist). A canvas_id with no query tool is dead output — the agent literally cannot reach the staged data.

Read the full file on GitHub · 556 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 556 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A a15da8c76763

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-canvas is a skill published in the GitHub repository cyanheads/shift-mcp-server (1 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 7,799 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to api-canvas, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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