DocsAgent MCP — Zotero, Obsidian & Apple Notes for AI agents 📚⚡
DocsAgent gives AI agents instant, private access to your personal knowledge base.docsagent is the spec-driven MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets
any AI agent — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Qwen Code, or any MCP client — search, read, and
write your library, vault, and (macOS) through a resident
. BM25 full-text search + query-ranked passage retrieval over
at , fully local (RAG-ready knowledge base).
⚡ DocsAgent — give your AI agents instant, private access to your personal knowledge base (Zotero, Obsidian, Apple Notes supported now, local docs on the road). Native C++ search core: BM25 + passage ranking in ~15 ms. MCP server for Claude, Cursor, Cline & any MCP client.
DOCSAGENT_CONFIG
Последняя проверка
2026-10-26
Звёзды
578
Инструменты
—
Аптайм
—
Zotero
Obsidian
Apple Notes
C++ search engine
1,000+ PDFs
~15 ms
🔒 Local-first & private — the engine reads your Zotero library, Obsidian vault, and
Apple Notes store directly on your machine. Your notes and PDFs never leave it.
🗂 Three sources, one query — Zotero items/annotations/notes, Obsidian vaults, and
Apple Notes (macOS only); mixed search fuses all three by reciprocal rank.
⚡ Native C++ search core — inverted-index BM25 + passage ranking, millisecond lookup,
low memory footprint (160–227 MB for a 1,500-paper library).
🧩 8 MCP tools — 5 read + 3 write, with JSON-schema validated arguments, token budgets,
result dedup, and a three-layer write safety gate.
🌐 Two transports — stdio for local MCP clients, Streamable HTTP for remote deployment
(origin checks, API-key / OAuth 2.0 token introspection, per-request RBAC, /health probe).
🐍 Two shells, one core — this TypeScript package and a feature-equal
Python wrapper ship the same tools over the same JSON-RPC contract.
Architecture
MCP Client (Claude Desktop / Cursor / Cline / Qwen Code / any MCP host)
│ stdio (local) or Streamable HTTP /mcp (remote)
▼
MCP shell ← this package (@docsagent/mcp-zotero / docsagent-mcp-zotero)
· tool schemas (spec-driven), argument validation, token budget, dedup
· write orchestration via the Zotero local API, write safety gate, RBAC
· group-library sync via the Zotero Web API
│ JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP ({coreHost}:{httpPort}/rpc, cpp-httplib)
▼
DocsAgent Core (resident C++ engine)
· reads ~/Zotero/zotero.sqlite + storage/, an Obsidian vault, and (macOS) the
Apple Notes store — directly on your machine
· builds & serves one index per source (BM25 + passage ranking); mixed search
(source "all") fuses them by reciprocal rank (RRF, k=60)
The shell never spawns the core during tool calls and never touches your source files.
The core runs as a background service and stays available across MCP client restarts.
Tool schemas and error codes: spec/.
Quick Start
1. Start the core
npx @docsagent/docsagent start # spawn the bundled core for your platform
npx @docsagent/docsagent status # pid / endpoint / version
Python shell (same verbs, under the core subcommand):
(core stop / core restart also available. The core indexes every configured source — your
Zotero data directory, your Obsidian vault, and (macOS) Apple Notes — and serves JSON-RPC on
http://0.0.0.0:23120/rpc.)
2. Configure your MCP client
Claude Desktop / Cursor / Cline / Qwen Code (mcpServers):
Install the Python package first (step 1) so docsagent-mcp is on your PATH.
On startup the shell connects to the core, loads sources, and checks index status. If the
core is not running it fails fast with startup instructions — it never spawns anything.
MCP Tools (external API)
8 tools, 5 read + 3 write. Schemas are the single-sourced contract in
spec/tools/*.json (mirrored into both packages); arguments are validated
before handlers run and failures map to typed docsagent error codes.
list_sources
Every searchable source with capabilities, supported targets/includes/browse modes,
filters, and document counts. Call this first.
Sources today: zotero (targets items, annotations, notes; collections/tags browse),
obsidian (a vault — notes as items, folders/tags browse), and apple-notes (macOS only —
the engine omits the source on other platforms). The vault is found at
~/Documents/Obsidian Vault (override with DOCSAGENT_OBSIDIAN_VAULT); Apple Notes is read
from the system Notes store (override with DOCSAGENT_APPLE_NOTES_DB).
search
Cross-entry search over one source (items, annotations, and notes).
Parameter
Type
Notes
query
string
plain keywords or phrases; required unless mode=grep
mode
relevance | grep
BM25 relevance by default; grep scans for a literal pattern without tokenization or ranking
pattern
string, required when mode=grep
literal string to scan for
caseSensitive, wholeWord, maxMatches
mode=grep only: ASCII case folding, [A-Za-z0-9_] word boundaries, hit cap total
ranking depth and token budget (mode=grep: max documents, max hit windows per document)
Returns results[] with global ids (zotero:KEY, obsidian:<path>, apple-notes:<uuid>),
titles, relevance, snippets; multi-target
searches group by target. In mode=grep each result carries matchCount and snippets[]
hit windows (hits[] with line/column/offset, and meta hits tagged with field),
relevance is 0, and the response adds totalMatches. Results are deduped (id, then
normalized title + year) and packed under a token budget.
search runs against config.defaultSource (default zotero). Mixed search is a core
capability: pass source: "all" to the core's search / grep methods and every source is
ranked independently, then fused with reciprocal rank fusion (k=60) — each hit is tagged
with its source. BM25 scores are not comparable across corpora, so fusion is rank-based.
get_content
Read one entry. mode=passages (query-ranked passages, k) or mode=fulltext
(offset pagination with nextOffset). Notes return their body with tags and metadata.
get_metadata
include: metadata, abstract, annotations, notes, citation (bibtex / csljson /
formatted via citationFormat/citationStyle). Notes are packed under the token budget.
list_library
Browse modes: collections (drill-down via parentId), items (by containerId),
tags, saved_searches, standalone_notes. Browse modes are per source — Zotero exposes
all of these, while Obsidian and Apple Notes expose folders (drill-down) / tags / items.
Write tools (three-layer safety gate)
Tool
What it does
Key arguments
import_item
Import local PDFs or resolve DOI / ISBN / arXiv IDs (via the Zotero translation server); optional autoClassify suggests collections
Add a Markdown child note to an item (converted to Zotero note HTML), with orphan verification and rollback
id, content, tags, confirmed
batch_modify
Bulk add_to_collection / remove_from_collection / add_tags / remove_tags on up to 200 items in batches of 50
action, ids, containerId, tags, confirmed
Write tools target Zotero sources only — the Obsidian and Apple Notes sources are read-only.
Write safety gate (spec/algorithms/write-gate.md): layer 1 write tools are not
registered unless enableWrites=true; layer 2confirmed=false returns a preview and
consumes no rate-limit quota; layer 3 confirmed writes consume a per-hour rate limit
(default 30/h). Anything above 20 items in batch_modify additionally reports
requiresConfirmation in the preview.
Engine performance
The C++ engine powers PapersGPT — the same index and
retrieval stack ships in this MCP server. Benchmark on a real Zotero installation
(full write-up):
Metric
Mac (Intel i9)
Windows VM (4C8G)
Library size
1,506 PDFs (4.5 GB on disk)
500+ PDFs
Index build time
141 s
a few seconds
Memory (agent process)
227 MB
160 MB
Average retrieval latency
~15 ms
~15 ms
Indexing cost scales roughly linearly with library size; retrieval latency stays
constant — a 10,000-paper library (~30 GB) indexes in about 15–20 minutes, and
everyday search stays at ~15 ms.
For comparison: a typical web page load takes 1,000–3,000 ms; a blink of an eye is
100–150 ms. PapersGPT answers in ~15 ms, fully offline.
Privacy: your library never leaves your machine.
Configuration
Config lives at ~/.docsagent/config.json (or $DOCSAGENT_CONFIG) — one file shared by
the JS shell, the Python wrapper, and the C++ core. Validated against
spec/config.json.
Key
Default
Description
coreHost
0.0.0.0
Address the core binds and the shell dials
httpPort
23120
Core HTTP port (POST /rpc)
coreBinary
""
Optional explicit path to the core binary
zoteroDataDir
~/Zotero
Zotero data directory
zoteroApiUrl
http://localhost:23119/api
Zotero local API (write orchestration)
zoteroGroups
[]
Group libraries to sync from zotero.org
enableWrites
false
Register the three write tools
writeRateLimitPerHour
30
Confirmed-write rate limit
maxTokensPerTool
4000
Token budget per tool result
defaultSource
zotero
Source the shell searches and resolves id prefixes in (zotero, obsidian, apple-notes)
transport
stdio
stdio or streamable-http
httpListenAddr
0.0.0.0:8080
Listen address for streamable-http (/mcp)
authMode / authConfig
none
api-key or oauth2 (RFC 7662) + allowedOrigins
rbacRoles
{}
role → allowed tool names (per-request RBAC on HTTP)
logLevel
info
debug / info / warn / error
Distribution
Channel
Package
Bundled core
Size
npm (JS/TS shell)
@docsagent/docsagent
all platforms in bin/
~70 MB tarball
PyPI (Python shell)
docsagent-mcp (pip install ./python)
same binaries in the wheel
~65 MB wheel
Bundled core platforms: macOS universal (Intel + Apple Silicon), Windows x64
(x86_64), Linux x64 (x86_64) — Linux ARM is not supported. Source availability:
Zotero and Obsidian work on every platform; Apple Notes is macOS-only (list_sources
omits it elsewhere).
Both shells read the same config and talk to the same core — pick either (or both) as
your MCP distribution channel. Core lifecycle (start / stop / restart / status)
is available from both CLIs.
⚡ DocsAgent — give your AI agents instant, private access to your personal knowledge base (Zotero, Obsidian, Apple Notes supported now, local docs on the road). Native C++ search core: BM25 + passage
⚡ DocsAgent — give your AI agents instant, private access to your personal knowledge base (Zotero, Obsidian, Apple Notes supported now, local docs on the road). Native C++ search core: BM25 + passage ranking in ~15 ms. MCP server for Claude, Cursor, Cline & any MCP client.
Инструменты
Инструменты
Списка инструментов пока нет. У удалённых серверов он появляется после первой проверки состояния.
FAQ
Вопросы
Как установить Docsagent?
Скопируйте на этой странице конфигурацию stdio для Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code или VS Code. Она использует установку издателя, а не прокси PlugMCP.
Издатель указывает следующие переменные окружения: DOCSAGENT_CONFIG.
Какой транспорт использует Docsagent?
Docsagent работает локально через stdio.
Когда Docsagent проверялся в последний раз?
Последняя проверка: 2026-10-26. ⚡ DocsAgent — give your AI agents instant, private access to your personal knowledge base (Zotero, Obsidian, Apple Notes supported now, local docs on the road). Native C++ search core: BM25 + passage ranking in ~15 ms. MCP server for Claude, Cursor, Cline & any MCP client.