What is private-journal-mcp?

This project gives Claude, the AI assistant, a private journaling system it can write to and search while helping you with work. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, which is a standard way to add tools and capabilities to Claude. Once installed, Claude can save its own notes, observations, and technical learnings to files on your computer, then search through them later using natural language. The journal is divided into categories. Reflections hold broader thinking and processed understanding. Observations hold short, discrete noticings. Project notes are tied to specific work folders. Other categories cover things like technical insights, notes about the person Claude is collaborating with, and general knowledge Claude picks up. Each entry is saved as a text file with a timestamp and structured metadata. Search works by meaning rather than keyword matching. The project includes a local AI model that converts journal entries into numeric representations of meaning, so Claude can search for entries that are conceptually related to a query even if the exact words differ. All of this runs on your machine and no data is sent anywhere outside it. Installation requires running one command to register the server with Claude. Once configured, Claude can call the journaling tools during any conversation. The intent is for Claude to build memory across conversations, remembering past decisions, failed approaches, and user preferences so that collaboration improves over time. The author wrote a blog post explaining the motivation behind the project, which is linked in the README.