How to Use Claude with Your Personal Notes

August 23, 2026 · 5 min read

Claude is brilliant at reasoning — but it forgets everything between conversations. What if it could search your notes, remember your decisions, and build on research you've already done? With xNotePadAI's MCP server, it can. Here's how to set it up in under a minute.

What This Gives You

Once connected, Claude can:

Setup: Claude Desktop (macOS)

Two steps. Total time: ~45 seconds.

1. Get your token

Visit xnotepadai.com/settings and click Copy next to your MCP token. No signup needed — it's pre-generated.

2. Add to Claude's config

Open ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xnotepad": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://www.xnotepadai.com/api/mcp/",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. You'll see "xnotepad" in the MCP tools list (🔧 icon).

Setup: Claude Code (CLI)

One command:

claude mcp add --transport http xnotepad \
  https://www.xnotepadai.com/api/mcp/ \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"

Try It: Your First Interaction

After connecting, try these prompts:

What Claude Uses Under the Hood

Claude has access to 13 MCP tools. It picks the right one based on your request:

Privacy & Security

• • Your notes are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM
• • Claude can only access notes in your tenant — scoped by token
• • Notes marked 🔒 Confidential are permanently excluded from all responses
• • Claude can only modify notes it created (tagged agent-created)
• • Revoke access any time from Settings — instant, no grace period

The Long-Term Value

Every time Claude saves something to your notes, your knowledge base grows. Over weeks and months, Claude's ability to answer questions about your work compounds — because the answers come from your accumulated knowledge, not its training data. It's persistent, private AI memory that you own.