davidhollenberger/bear-notes-mcp

Bear Notes MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides access to Bear notes, allowing you to search, read, create, and manage your Bear notes directly from Claude Code and other MCP-compatible applications.

Features

Read Operations (Direct SQLite Access)

• Search notes - Search by term with optional tag filtering
• Open note - Get full note content by ID or title
• Get tags - List all tags with note counts
• Open tag - Get all notes with a specific tag
• Get untagged notes - Find notes without any tags
• Get todo notes - Find notes containing todo items
• Get today's notes - Get notes created today

Write Operations (Bear x-callback-url)

• Create note - Create new notes with optional title, tags, timestamps
• Add text to note - Append, prepend, or replace text in existing notes
• Grab URL - Create notes from web page content
• Rename tag - Rename existing tags
• Delete tag - Remove tags from Bear
• Trash note - Move notes to trash

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/davidhollenberger/bear-notes-mcp.git
   cd bear-notes-mcp
   

2. Create a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv bear-mcp-env
   source bear-mcp-env/bin/activate
   

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install mcp
   

4. Get your Bear API token:

   • Open Bear
   • Go to Bear → Preferences → Advanced
   • Copy your API token

Configuration

For Claude Desktop

Add this configuration to your Claude Desktop settings file:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bear-notes": {
      "command": "/path/to/bear-notes-mcp/bear-mcp-env/bin/python",
      "args": ["/path/to/bear-notes-mcp/bear-mcp-server.py"],
      "env": {
        "BEAR_API_TOKEN": "your_bear_api_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Code

Use the /mcp command to add the Bear MCP server:

/mcp add bear-notes --env BEAR_API_TOKEN=your_bear_api_token_here -- /path/to/bear-notes-mcp/bear-mcp-env/bin/python /path/to/bear-notes-mcp/bear-mcp-server.py

Replace /path/to/bear-notes-mcp with the actual path to your cloned repository and your_bear_api_token_here with your Bear API token.

Requirements

• macOS (Bear is Mac-only)
• Python 3.7+
• Bear app installed and running
• Bear API token (for write operations)