About MCP

MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is a new open standard that major AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, and others) have adopted to let tools like Engram plug directly into AI assistants. Think of it as a universal connector: one standard, and Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any other AI tool that supports MCP can reach your notes — search them, read them, and save new ones — all with permissions you control.

You don’t need to understand MCP to use Engram. Pick your AI tool in AI Integrations, follow a few clicks, and you’re done. This page is here if you want the background.

What MCP is

Before MCP, getting your notes into an AI assistant meant copy-pasting, exporting, or building a custom integration per app. MCP standardizes the connection:

• Engram exposes a single MCP endpoint — one URL, one protocol.
• Your AI client speaks MCP — Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, and more.
• The handshake is OAuth. You stay in control of what’s reachable through which client.
• Tools, prompts, and resources are discoverable — the client asks Engram what’s available; Engram answers. Nothing pre-baked per integration.

A useful one-line metaphor: MCP is USB-C for AI — one wire format, many devices on either end.

What you can do once it’s connected

• Ask your AI to find notes about a topic — it searches semantically across your vault and pulls back the most relevant
• Ask it to summarize a folder, or chain related notes together
• Have it draft a new note and save it directly into your vault (with your approval)
• Use Engram’s search inside your AI workflow without exporting, copy-pasting, or duplicating your notes anywhere

You can ask Claude “what did I write about X last month?” and it actually finds the answer by calling Engram’s search tool.

The protocol, briefly

For power readers — the technical surface. You can skip this and still use Engram fine.

Engram speaks MCP over HTTPS. Specifically:

• Authorization — OAuth 2.1 with Dynamic Client Registration (DCR), so clients don’t need pre-issued credentials.
• Discovery — GET /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server and tools/list so clients learn what’s reachable.
• Tools — search, get_note, write_note, list_folders, and more.
• Resources — notes addressable as URIs.
• Scopes — granular permissions you grant per session (see Scopes).

Pages in this section

• MCP Config — JSON snippet + path table for users connecting via config files instead of the GUI
• Scopes — what each permission grants
• Troubleshooting — when the connector won’t talk to Engram

For per-client setup (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and more), see AI Integrations.

The interactive tool catalog (every tool Engram exposes, with input schemas and examples) ships in a later phase and will be generated directly from the backend code so it can’t drift.