apple-notes-mcp

MCP server for Apple Notes with semantic search and CRUD operations. Claude searches, reads, creates, updates, and manages your Apple Notes through natural language.

Features

• Chunk-Based Search - Long notes split into chunks for accurate matching
• Query Caching - 60x faster repeated searches
• Knowledge Graph - Tags, links, and related notes discovery
• Hybrid Search - Vector + keyword search with Reciprocal Rank Fusion
• Semantic Search - Find notes by meaning, not keywords
• Full CRUD - Create, read, update, delete, and move notes
• Incremental Indexing - Re-embed only changed notes
• Background Index Jobs - Async full/incremental indexing with progress polling
• Dual Embedding - Local HuggingFace or OpenRouter API

What's New in 1.8.1

• Faster list-notes folder filtering - list-notes now queries only the requested folder instead of scanning all notes first
• Duplicate folder name correctness - Folder filtering now aggregates matching folders across accounts
• Large vault performance - Folder-scoped listing is significantly faster on larger note libraries

Installation

npm (recommended)

npm install -g @disco_trooper/apple-notes-mcp
apple-notes-mcp

The setup wizard guides you through:

1. Choosing your embedding provider (local or OpenRouter)
2. Configuring API keys if needed
3. Setting up Claude Code integration
4. Indexing your notes

From source

git clone https://github.com/disco-trooper/apple-notes-mcp.git
cd apple-notes-mcp
bun install
bun run start

Requirements

• macOS (uses Apple Notes via JXA)
• Bun runtime
• Apple Notes app with notes

Quick Start

Run the command after installation:

apple-notes-mcp

The setup wizard starts automatically on first run. Restart Claude Code after setup to use the MCP tools.

Configuration

Configuration stored in ~/.apple-notes-mcp/.env:

Variable	Description	Default
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	OpenRouter API key (enables cloud embeddings)	-
EMBEDDING_MODEL	Model name (local or OpenRouter)	Xenova/multilingual-e5-small
EMBEDDING_DIMS	Embedding dimensions	4096
READONLY_MODE	Block all write operations	false
INDEX_TTL	Auto-refresh-on-search interval in seconds (disabled when unset)	-
SEARCH_REFRESH_TIMEOUT_MS	Max time search waits for refresh before using stale index	2000
INDEX_JOB_RETENTION_SECONDS	How long completed/failed index jobs remain queryable	3600
EMBEDDING_BATCH_SIZE	Batch size for embedding generation	50
DEBUG	Enable debug logging	false

Search Auto-Refresh Policy

• search-notes does not force refresh on every request.
• If INDEX_TTL is unset, auto-refresh is disabled and search uses the current index.
• If INDEX_TTL is set, refresh runs only after TTL expiration.
• If refresh fails or takes longer than SEARCH_REFRESH_TIMEOUT_MS, search falls back to stale index results instead of timing out.

To reconfigure:

apple-notes-mcp setup
# or from source:
bun run setup

Embedding Providers

Local (default): Uses HuggingFace Transformers with Xenova/multilingual-e5-small. Free, runs locally, ~200MB download.

OpenRouter: Uses cloud API. Fast, requires no local resources, needs API key from openrouter.ai.

See docs/models.md for model comparison.

Tools

Search & Discovery

search-notes

Hybrid vector + fulltext search.

query: "meeting notes from last week"
folder: "Work"           # optional, filter by folder
limit: 10                # default: 20
mode: "hybrid"           # hybrid, keyword, or semantic
include_content: false   # include full content vs preview

list-notes

List notes with sorting and filtering. Without parameters, shows index statistics.

sort_by: "modified"      # created, modified, or title (default: modified)
order: "desc"            # asc or desc (default: desc)
limit: 10                # max notes to return (1-100)
folder: "Work"           # filter by folder (case-insensitive)

When folder is provided, the server fetches only matching folders from Apple Notes. This keeps folder-scoped requests fast even when your vault has hundreds of notes.

Examples:

• Get 5 newest notes: { sort_by: "created", order: "desc", limit: 5 }
• Recently modified: { sort_by: "modified", limit: 10 }
• Alphabetical in folder: { sort_by: "title", order: "asc", folder: "Projects" }

list-folders

List all Apple Notes folders.

get-note

Get note content by title.

title: "My Note"          # or "Work/My Note" for disambiguation
include_html: false       # include raw HTML (default: false)

get-tables

Extract structured table data from a note.

title: "My Note"

Returns:

{
  "tableCount": 2,
  "tables": [{
    "index": 0,
    "rows": [["Header1", "Header2"], ["Val1", "Val2"]],
    "formatting": [[{"bold": true}, {"bold": true}], ...]
  }]
}

Indexing

index-notes

Index notes for semantic search.

mode: "incremental"       # incremental (default) or full
force: false              # force reindex even if TTL hasn't expired
background: false         # optional; defaults to false (synchronous mode)

Use mode: "full" to create the chunk index for better long-note search. First full index takes longer as it generates chunks, but subsequent searches run fast.

For large vaults, prefer background indexing:

start-index-job

mode: "full"               # full or incremental

Returns a job snapshot with id, status, and progress. Progress updates in smaller steps across fetch, embed, and persist phases.

get-index-job

job_id: "<job-id>"

Poll until status is completed, failed, or cancelled. You may see cancelling as a transitional status.

list-index-jobs

limit: 10                  # optional, 1-50

cancel-index-job

job_id: "<job-id>"

Requests best-effort cancellation for a running job. Cancellation is cooperative:

• A long-running step must reach a cancellation checkpoint.
• Partial work may remain.
• Start a new job after the current one reaches cancelled.

reindex-note

Re-index a single note after manual edits.

title: "My Note"

CRUD Operations

create-note

Create a note in Apple Notes.

title: "New Note"
content: "# Heading\n\nMarkdown content..."
folder: "Work"            # optional, defaults to Notes

After create, update, delete, or move, the server auto-syncs vector and chunk indexes in best-effort mode. If sync partly fails, the tool response includes an index sync warning. Run reindex-note or index-notes.

update-note

Update an existing note.

title: "My Note"
content: "Updated markdown content..."
reindex: true             # re-embed after update (default: true)

delete-note

Delete a note (requires confirmation).

title: "My Note"
confirm: true             # must be true to delete

move-note

Move a note to another folder.

title: "My Note"
folder: "Archive"

batch-delete

Delete multiple notes at once.

titles: ["Note 1", "Note 2"]  # OR folder: "Old Project"
confirm: true                 # required for safety

batch-move

Move multiple notes to a target folder.

titles: ["Note 1", "Note 2"]  # OR sourceFolder: "Old"
targetFolder: "Archive"       # required

Index Management

purge-index

Clear all indexed data. Use when switching embedding models or to fix corrupted index.

confirm: true   # required for safety

After purging, run index-notes to rebuild.

Knowledge Graph

list-tags

List all tags with occurrence counts.

search-by-tag

Find notes with a specific tag.

tag: "project"
folder: "Work"    # optional
limit: 20         # default: 20

related-notes

Find notes related to a source note.

title: "My Note"
types: ["tag", "link", "similar"]  # default: all
limit: 10                          # default: 10

export-graph

Export knowledge graph for visualization.

format: "json"     # json or graphml
folder: "Work"     # optional filter

Supported Formats:

• json - For custom visualization (D3.js, web apps)
• graphml - For professional tools (Gephi, yEd, Cytoscape)

Claude Code Setup

Automatic (recommended)

The setup wizard automatically adds apple-notes-mcp to Claude Code. Run apple-notes-mcp after installation.

Manual

Add to ~/.claude.json:

For npm installation:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apple-notes": {
      "command": "apple-notes-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

For source installation:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apple-notes": {
      "command": "bun",
      "args": ["run", "/path/to/apple-notes-mcp/src/index.ts"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Usage Examples

After setup, use natural language with Claude:

• "Search my notes for project ideas"
• "Create a note called 'Meeting Notes' in the Work folder"
• "What's in my note about vacation plans?"
• "Move the 'Old Project' note to Archive"
• "Index my notes" (after adding notes in Apple Notes)

Troubleshooting

"Note not found"

Use full path format Folder/Note Title when multiple notes share the same name.

Slow first search

Local embeddings download the model on first use (~200MB). Subsequent searches run fast.

"READONLY_MODE is enabled"

Set READONLY_MODE=false in .env to enable write operations.

Notes missing from search

Run index-notes to update the search index. Use mode: full if incremental misses changes.

"iCloud account not available" / Can't get account "iCloud"

This error comes from a different Apple Notes MCP implementation that uses tool search_notes and argument Keywords.

This project uses:

• tool: search-notes
• argument: query

If your client calls search_notes with Keywords, point your MCP config to apple-notes-mcp and restart the client.

JXA errors

Ensure Apple Notes runs and contains notes. Grant automation permissions when prompted.

"JSON Parse error: Unexpected identifier undefined"

This usually means the indexing process ran out of memory. Try:

1. Close other applications to free memory
2. Set EMBEDDING_BATCH_SIZE=25 in .env to reduce memory usage
3. Restart Apple Notes app
4. Run index-notes again

Skipped notes during indexing

Some notes may be skipped if they are:

• Locked - Unlock them in Apple Notes if you want them indexed
• Syncing - Wait for iCloud sync to complete, then reindex
• Corrupted - Try copying content to a new note and deleting the old one

The indexer will report which notes were skipped and continue with the rest.

Development

# Type check
bun run check

# Run tests
bun run test

# Run with coverage
bun run test:coverage

# Run with debug logging
DEBUG=true bun run start

# Watch mode
bun run dev

Contributing

PRs welcome! Please:

• Run bun run check before submitting
• Add tests for new functionality
• Update documentation as needed

License

MIT