Tinderbox MCP

🚀 Tinderbox MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables AI assistants like Claude to interact with Tinderbox, a powerful macOS knowledge management application. This allows you to control Tinderbox via natural language and connect with other services accessible to the assistant.

🚀 Quick Start

This server enables AI assistants such as Claude to interact with Tinderbox, a robust macOS knowledge - management application. You can control Tinderbox using natural language and connect it with other accessible services.

✨ Features

Included Tinderbox Operations

This server includes the following Tinderbox operations:

• create_note - Create a new note in the document.
• link_notes - Create a link between existing notes, optionally specifying the link type.
• update_attributes - Change the attribute values of a specified note.
• read_note - Retrieve note content (currently only returns the note title and body).
• get_siblings - Find notes at the same hierarchical level (this tool and others return the note path and its ChildCount to let the assistant know where it can explore further).
• get_children - Get all child notes of a specified parent note.
• get_links - Find all outbound links of a note.

All these operations require the model to know which document to use. The default document name is Playground, which is my own test document. Other default values can be found in the script configuration at /src/index.ts.

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Tinderbox
• Node.js 18 or higher
• An MCP - compatible client (tested only with Claude Desktop here)

Steps

1. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/phkus/tinderbox-mcp.git
cd tinderbox-mcp

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Build the project:

npm run build

💻 Usage Examples

Running the Server

Use the following command to run the server:

npm run start

Using with Claude Desktop

1. Add the following configuration to Claude Desktop's configuration file:

{
  "Tinderbox MCP Server": {
    "path": "/path/to/tinderbox-mcp-server"
  }
}

2. After starting the server, you can select the Tinderbox MCP Server as the target in Claude Desktop.

📚 Documentation

Note

⚠️ Important Note

The update_attribute tool may overwrite or delete existing data. Make sure to back up your documents regularly.

Expansion Suggestions

💡 Usage Tip

• Integrate the Tinderbox MCP Server with other knowledge management systems.
• Add support for DEVONthink and Bookends.
• Implement more complex query functions such as search and filtering.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Josh Rutkowski for his inspiring work. The main difference in this project is that applescript - mcp passes the full script content to the terminal, while this implementation calls individual script files.

Thanks to Mark Bernstein, the developer of Tinderbox, for creating this scriptable application.

📄 License

This project is under the MIT license.

Contribution

Contributions to this project are welcome, and you can also provide feedback on the Tinderbox forum (username: pkus).