upnote-lens-mcp
A hybrid MCP server that lets your AI assistant work with your UpNote notes:
- 🔍 Find & search notes by keyword across titles and bodies.
- 📖 Read & summarize — it returns the actual note text, so the AI can summarize, analyze, or answer questions about what you've written.
- ✍️ Create new notes from the chat.
Under the hood: reads come from the local UpNote SQLite database (read-only),
so real content comes back as text; writes go through the upnote:// URL scheme
(x-callback-url) and never touch the database.
The write side (URL scheme) is based on chadthornton/upnote-mcp (MIT).
Usage
Once it's registered, just talk to your AI assistant in plain language — it picks the right tool for you. No commands or syntax to memorize. For example:
- "Summarize my UpNote notes about the Q3 roadmap."
- "Find notes where I mentioned Postgres tuning and pull out the key points."
- "What did I write about onboarding last month?"
- "Show me my 5 most recent notes."
- "Create a note titled 'Standup 6/4' with today's three priorities."
Reading, searching, summarizing, and creating all happen through natural conversation.
Requirements
- macOS — fully supported and verified.
- Windows — best-effort. URLs launch through the registered scheme handler,
and the default DB path is guessed under
%APPDATA%\UpNote\. This path is not verified by the author — if reads fail, setUPNOTE_LENS_DB(see below). - Python 3.10+ (or just uv, which brings its own).
- UpNote desktop app installed.
Install & register
🤖 Let AI install it (easiest)
Give your MCP client (Claude, etc.) a link to
llms-install.md and it will run the steps and set everything
up for you.
🧑 Install it yourself
Pick the first option that fits what you already have. Each option includes how to register it in Claude.
Claude Desktop config file (referenced in each option):
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json- Windows:
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Option 1 — with uv (recommended)
Requires uv installed once
(brew install uv, or curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh).
After that there's no package install step — uvx downloads, caches, and
runs upnote-lens-mcp on demand.
Claude Code:
claude mcp add upnote-lens -- uvx upnote-lens-mcp
Claude Desktop:
{ "mcpServers": { "upnote-lens": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["upnote-lens-mcp"] } } }
Option 2 — with pip (if you don't have uv)
pip install upnote-lens-mcp
Claude Code:
claude mcp add upnote-lens -- upnote-lens-mcp
Claude Desktop:
{ "mcpServers": { "upnote-lens": { "command": "upnote-lens-mcp" } } }
Option 3 — from GitHub over HTTPS (if you don't have pip)
When you can't use PyPI/pip, install straight from the repo with uv. (No uv yet?
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh.)
Claude Code:
claude mcp add upnote-lens -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/AwesomeHye/upnote-lens-mcp upnote-lens-mcp
Claude Desktop:
{ "mcpServers": { "upnote-lens": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/AwesomeHye/upnote-lens-mcp", "upnote-lens-mcp"] } } }
Tools
Read (queries the local DB → returns real text)
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
search_notes(query, limit=20) | Substring search over title/body. Returns id, title, updated time, snippet |
get_note(note_id, include_html=False) | Full title + body text of a note (optionally raw HTML) |
list_recent(limit=20) | Most recently updated notes |
list_notebooks() | Notebooks with note counts and parent |
list_notes_in_notebook(notebook_id, limit=50) | Notes inside a notebook |
list_tags() | Tags with note counts |
list_notes_by_tag(tag_title, limit=50) | Notes carrying a tag |
Write (upnote:// URL scheme)
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
create_note(title, content, notebook?, markdown=True, new_window=False) | Create a note. content is Markdown by default. notebook matches by name. Tags can't be set (see below) |
open_note(note_id, new_window=False) | Open an existing note in the app |
open_notebook(notebook_id) | Open a notebook in the app |
Tag limitation: UpNote's
note/newURL scheme has no tag parameter, and hashtags placed in the body stay as plain text rather than becoming real tags (they only convert to tags when typed in the editor). If you need tags, add them manually in the app after the note is created.
Override the DB path
If the database isn't in the default location (or you're on Windows), point at it with an environment variable:
UPNOTE_LENS_DB=/path/to/upnote.sqlite3
Default paths:
- macOS:
~/Library/Containers/com.getupnote.desktop/Data/Library/Application Support/UpNote/upnote.sqlite3 - Windows (best guess):
%APPDATA%\UpNote\upnote.sqlite3
License
MIT. See LICENSE for details. The URL-scheme formats and launch approach on the write side are adapted from chadthornton/upnote-mcp (MIT).