mcp-standardnotes

Give Claude secure read/write access to your Standard Notes vault — end-to-end encrypted, local stdio only, zero cloud middleman.

Ask Claude to summarize your notes, draft new ones, organize tags, search across your vault — all while your master key stays on your machine. Works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and any MCP-compatible client.

Disclaimer. This is an unofficial third-party integration. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Standard Notes Ltd. "Standard Notes" is a trademark of Standard Notes Ltd.

Why

• 🔒 End-to-end encrypted. All decryption happens locally using audited libsodium primitives (Argon2id + XChaCha20-Poly1305 IETF). Your password never leaves RAM; your master key never leaves your machine.
• 🔌 Local stdio only. No network port is ever opened by this server.
• 🔑 OS keychain for session storage. macOS Keychain, Linux libsecret, Windows Credential Vault — never plaintext files.
• ☁️ Works with the official cloud or self-hosted Standard Notes servers.

Features

notes_create and notes_update accept an optional tags: string[] (tag UUIDs) to link tags at write time.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 20
• A Standard Notes account on protocol 004 (default for any account created or upgraded since 2020)
• macOS, Linux, or Windows with a working OS keychain

Quickstart

1. Install

npm install -g mcp-standardnotes

Or run from a clone if you prefer:

git clone https://github.com/lozit/mcp-standardnotes.git
cd mcp-standardnotes
npm install && npm run build

2. Log in once

mcp-standardnotes-login         # if installed globally
# or, from a clone:
npm run login

You'll be prompted for email and password. The password derives your master key in memory (Argon2id) and is never written to disk. An encrypted session is stored in your OS keychain; subsequent runs reuse it automatically. At the end of login, you're offered to wire the server into Claude Desktop in one step — accept it, restart Desktop, done.

3. Hook it up to Claude

Claude Desktop (macOS / Windows) — easiest path, run:

mcp-standardnotes-install

This writes the right entry (absolute Node + binary paths, your email from the keychain) into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (or %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on Windows), backing up any existing config first. Quit Claude Desktop fully (⌘Q) and relaunch.

Claude Code — let the claude CLI do it:

mcp-standardnotes-install code   # prints the exact `claude mcp add` command

Or add to ~/.claude.json / .mcp.json manually:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-standardnotes": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "mcp-standardnotes",
      "env": { "SN_EMAIL": "you@example.com" }
    }
  }
}

Then /mcp to reconnect

... View full README on GitHub