mcp-apple-notes

MCP Apple Notes provides a local, self-contained server that enables semantic search and retrieval augmented generation over your Apple Notes. It uses an on-device embeddings model (all-MiniLM-L6-v2) to generate vector representations and stores them in LanceDB, allowing your AI assistant to perform fast, accurate searches against your notes without requiring external APIs or keys. The server integrates with Claude Desktop via a standard MCP setup, so you can index your notes, then ask Claude to search or reference them during conversations. The flow is designed to be fully local: notes are indexed locally, embeddings are computed on-device, and retrieval happens without exposing data to external services. To connect the MCP server to Claude Desktop, configure Claude's Claude Desktop config to point to your local Bun-based runner that executes index.ts, which serves the MCP endpoints to Claude.

Prerequisites:

• Bun (https://bun.sh/docs/installation)
• Claude Desktop (https://claude.ai/download)

Installation steps:

1. Clone the repository and navigate into it:

git clone https://github.com/RafalWilinski/mcp-apple-notes
cd mcp-apple-notes

2. Install dependencies using Bun:

bun install

3. Ensure you have Bun installed at the path used in your config. The MCP server script to run is index.ts inside the apple-notes-mcp directory. You will reference Bun as the command and index.ts as the script to execute (example shown in the config):

{
  "command": "/Users/<YOUR_USER_NAME>/.bun/bin/bun",
  "args": ["/Users/<YOUR_USER_NAME>/apple-notes-mcp/index.ts"]
}

4. Start the server using your preferred method (for Claude Desktop, configure the JSON as shown in mcp_config and point Claude to this runner).
5. In Claude Desktop, open Settings > Developer > Edit Config and add the entry for the local MCP server, then restart Claude to establish the connection.

Tips and notes:

• Replace <YOUR_USER_NAME> with your actual system username in the paths.
• The setup is designed to be fully local; no API keys are required for Apple Notes indexing or retrieval.
• If you change the index.ts path or the Bun binary location, update the mcp_config accordingly.
• Logs can help troubleshoot: check Claude’s log files under ~/Library/Logs/Claude/ for mcp-server-local-machine or general mcp.log.
• Ensure Apple Notes access permissions are configured on your machine so the script can read notes via JXA.
• This workflow assumes the notes can be indexed and stored locally in LanceDB; consider backups of the LanceDB database if needed.