Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop’s Connectors UI is the smoothest path to connecting Engram. It’s a paste-the-URL-and-sign-in flow — no config files, no API keys to copy. If you want the background on what’s happening under the hood, see MCP.

Prerequisites

Before you start, confirm:

• You have an Engram account at app.engram.page (or your self-hosted instance).
• At least one vault is synced — open the Obsidian plugin or the web app and confirm notes have synced within the last day.
• You can sign in via browser. The MCP auth flow opens a browser window.

Note

Self-host: the MCP endpoint must be reachable over HTTPS. HTTP-only hosts will not pass OAuth.

Setup

1. Open claude.ai/customize/connectors. This is the central place to manage connectors for Claude — the settings here flow into both the desktop app and claude.ai.

2. Click Add custom connector and paste the Engram URL:

   • Cloud: https://app.engram.page/api/mcp
   • Self-host: https://your-engram-host/api/mcp

3. A browser authorization window opens.

4. Review the requested permissions on the scope screen and approve.

First-run auth

The first time you connect, Claude Desktop opens an authorization window automatically a browser window asking you to sign in to Engram. Sign in, tick the permissions you want to grant, and click Approve. The browser hands you back to Claude Desktop automatically — no copy-pasting tokens, no environment variables. It’s the same kind of sign-in flow you’d use for connecting any app to Google, Dropbox, or GitHub.

If you’d rather skip the browser flow — for headless, scripted, or shared-vault setups — you can authenticate with an API key instead. See MCP Config → API Key Authentication.

Tell Claude how to use it

Adding the connector is half the job — Claude won’t reach for Engram unless you tell it to. Drop a short instruction into Claude’s global preferences so every conversation knows to use Engram as memory.

1. Open claude.ai/settings/general.
2. Find the What personal preferences should Claude consider in responses? field (the global instructions box).
3. Paste this snippet — keep it on its own line so it stays in scope for every conversation:

Engram holds my personal notes — treat it as your long-term memory of me. Search it when a question depends on context I might have shared before. Before saving or updating a note, ask first.

Now Claude reaches for Engram automatically when it needs to look something up or save something you’ve shared.

Try it

Once connected and the global prompt is in place, the connector appears in your sidebar. Try asking:

• Search my vault for notes about the engineering interview process and summarize the top three.
• Find anything I wrote about embeddings in the last month.
• Read my note titled 'Q3 planning' and pull out the action items.
• Show me the frontmatter and outgoing links of 'project-ideas.md'.
• Draft a new note titled 'Sync with design — May 21' in my 'Meeting notes' folder with today's takeaways.
• Append a 'Decisions' section to 'roadmap.md' with these three items.
• List the top-level folders in my vault.
• Move everything in 'inbox' that mentions 'Q4' into 'Q4-planning'.

Claude calls Engram’s search (or get_note, write_note, etc.) tool, pulls back results, and answers in-context.

Scopes granted

Claude Desktop requests the mcp scope on the approval screen — a single grant that covers the full MCP tool surface against your vault. Granular per-action scopes (read-only, no-delete, etc.) are on the roadmap. See Scopes for details and the revocation flow.

Troubleshooting (Claude Desktop specific)

• The authorization window never opens. Make sure Claude Desktop is on the latest version and that no popup blocker is active.
• “Connector failed to load.” Confirm the MCP URL is reachable. Paste it into a browser tab — if you see a structured response page rather than an error, the connection is fine and the issue is on Claude Desktop’s side. Restart it and try again.

For cross-client failures (auth refused, scope errors, sync gaps), see Troubleshooting.

Revocation

To disconnect Claude Desktop from Engram:

1. In Claude Desktop, find the connector or MCP server entry and remove it.
2. In Engram, open your account → API Keys & Sessions and revoke the matching session.
3. The OAuth token is invalidated server-side. Claude Desktop will need to re-authenticate to reconnect.

You can also revoke from Claude’s side at claude.ai/customize/connectors — click the Engram connector and choose Disconnect.

Next steps

MCP Protocol overview.

Scopes Pick the minimum permissions.

All integrations Pick a different client.