MCP access
Claude answers from your notes without leaving your Mac.
For people who use Claude Code or Claude Desktop: Slate Drive can hand them eighteen tools for working with your library — search, reading, and six that write. Your notes are posted nowhere: the conversation reaches them through a door you opened on your own Mac.
Off by default. It listens on a local address only and requires a token you can change at any moment.
nothing on the internet can reach this
What it is
A way for a chat client to ask the apps on your Mac
a protocol, not a deal with one company
“What did I write in Research last week?”
Search and reading — one or two tools out of eighteen.
“Find the notes that mention the lease”
The search runs over text already read and sitting in the index.
“Put this summary in a new folder on the tablet”
One of the six writing tools. Deleting asks you through the client.
Reading uses this Mac’s engine
The tool hands over what the index already holds, and where it holds nothing, reads with an engine on this Mac. Cloud engines and AI models are never called over MCP.
“Give me what I marked in this book”
Reading can hand back not the whole text but only the passages under a marker — and the color of each band with them, so yellow and green don’t blur together.
“Send me this document as a file”
Export puts the file on a shelf and hands back a link good for fifteen minutes. The shelf holds no more than eight documents at once: a ninth pushes out whichever went longest unclaimed.
Which clients
Two work; cloud ones can’t connect
and that is the guarantee
Claude Code
worksOver HTTP on a local address. Connecting takes one command from the docs.
Claude Desktop
worksThrough a small bridge program that ships with the app.
claude.ai, Cowork
not supportedTheir connectors start in the provider’s cloud and can’t reach a local address.
Why that’s a good thing
A cloud connector can’t get to your Mac because outside it the server doesn’t exist. That is the proof nobody else can get in either.
What protects it
Four conditions, not a short list of tools
Off until you switch it on
One switch in settings. Turning it off takes effect at once.
A local address only
The server answers only apps on this Mac. From the network it doesn’t exist.
A token you hold
It lives in the Keychain and is shown masked. Rotate it and the old one stops working the same second.
Deleting asks first
Through the client, where the client can show a prompt. Where it can’t, the trash switch is the gate. The document goes to the tablet’s trash rather than vanishing.
FAQ
Questions about access
- Could someone see my library from the internet?
- No. The server is off until you switch it on, and once on it listens on an address unreachable from outside.
- Why doesn’t claude.ai work?
- Its connector runs in the cloud, and the cloud can’t reach an address inside your Mac. That limit isn’t ours, and it isn’t ours to lift.
- Can Claude delete my notes?
- Only into the tablet’s trash, after you confirm and with the trash switch on. Nothing is deleted for good.
- I gave the token to the wrong place — now what?
- Rotate it. The old one stops working immediately. Or switch the server off entirely.
- Do I have to keep the app open?
- It’s already running — the app lives in the menu bar. If it isn’t, the client finds nobody, and nothing happens without you.