Edith Second Brain

A second brain for AI.

edithapp.ai · Download for macOS · VS Code extension

Edith is a local, plain-Markdown knowledge base that Claude can read from and write to. Ask Claude to review your past sessions and it distils them into linked notes itself - no API key, no account, no inference of its own.

Claude session ──MCP──▶      Edith.app      ──▶  the graph lights up
                              │
                              └── vault/notes/*.md

What it does

• No API key. No account. No inference. Claude reads and writes your notes through its own session, on the plan you already pay for. Edith is the store and the canvas.
• Claude fills it for you. Ask "review my recent sessions and save anything worth keeping" and Claude reads your transcripts with list_sessions / read_session, then writes the notes back with save_note.
• Serves Claude over MCP. search_brain, read_note, list_notes, and save_note. Claude both reads from and writes to the brain mid-session.
• Shows you the retrieval. A search dims-glows what Claude considered; opening a note brightly glows what it actually used. Highlights fade over 30 seconds.
• Mini mode beside your session. Minimize Edith and it becomes a narrow panel docked to the left edge of the screen, drawing your brain and lighting up the notes Claude reaches for - the window and the panel are never up at the same time. With the window closed or minimized, the panel also opens on its own when a Claude session starts. It never takes focus, folds to a strip the width of the rail or shrinks to a small square in the corner - both just the live graph - and stays closed for the rest of a session once you close it. Turn off the automatic opening under Connection.
• Takes your own content too. Add content imports .md, .markdown, .txt, and .mdx files, or anything you paste. Files keep their existing frontmatter, so importing a Markdown vault preserves ids and links instead of duplicating notes. Import as written, or distil into concepts.
• Plain Markdown. Files on disk are the source of truth. Edit them in any editor. Delete the index and it rebuilds.

Install

Edith runs on a Mac with Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later. You also need Claude Code, in the terminal or the VS Code extension.

Download Edith — signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens with no security warnings. Open the .dmg, drag Edith into Applications, and open it from there. Restart any Claude Code sessions that were already running.

On Windows? The Windows build lives at Edith-Windows.

In VS Code

The Edith extension registers Edith as an MCP server in the editor, so there is no mcp.json to write and no port to look up:

code --install-extension raghavchari.edith-second-brain

It finds the running app and hands the editor a live connection. If Edith is not running when the editor goes to start the server, the extension offers to open it. The source is in vscode-extension/.

Edith is also listed in the official MCP registry as io.github.Rchari1/edith-second-brain, so clients that read the registry can find it without any of this.

Or build it yourself

Needs Node.js 22.12 or newer, and the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install)

... View full README on GitHub