KSJ MCP Server

Knowledge Synthesis Journal v2.0 — AI companion

Turn your handwritten journal photos into a searchable, AI-powered knowledge base — privately, on your own machine.

"Works great on paper. Magical with AI."

Get the journal: Knowledge Synthesis Journal v2.0 on Amazon

What it does

The KSJ MCP server connects your physical journal to an AI assistant via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an open standard for linking AI models to local tools and data.

Photograph a journal page, upload it, and your AI assistant can:

• Search across everything you've ever written

• Find connections between ideas (shared tags, @ references)

• Surface your open questions, key insights, and breakthroughs

• Export your knowledge base as Markdown or JSON

All processing is local. No cloud. No subscription. Your notes stay on your machine.

AI Platform Support

This server uses MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard with growing support across AI platforms and developer tools.

Currently supported:

• Claude Desktop (free) — full MCP support, recommended for getting started

Other MCP-compatible clients (Cursor, VS Code + GitHub Copilot, and others) can connect using the same config — check your client's MCP documentation for setup details.

Using ChatGPT, Gemini, or another platform? Use the export_captures tool to dump your knowledge base as Markdown or JSON, then paste it into your AI assistant of choice. Full native MCP support for additional platforms is on the roadmap as the ecosystem grows.

Setup (4 steps)

Step 1 — Install an MCP-compatible AI client

The fastest way to get started is Claude Desktop (free at claude.ai/download).

For other MCP clients, consult their documentation for how to register a local MCP server, then use the config in Step 4.

Step 2 — Install Tesseract OCR

Tesseract reads the text from your journal photos. It must be installed separately.

After installing, restart your AI client so the updated PATH is picked up.

Windows note: If you skip "Add to PATH", the server will still auto-detect Tesseract at the default install location (C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\). Adding to PATH is recommended but not required.

Step 3 — Install uv and the KSJ server

uv is a fast Python package manager used to install and run the KSJ server.

Install uv:

Verify with uv --version in a terminal before continuing.

Install the KSJ server (run once in a terminal):

uv tool install --from git+https://github.com/ChavezAILabs/ksj-mcp ksj-mcp

This installs ksj-mcp as a persistent command on your machine. Git must be installed for this step (Windows: Git for Windows).

Verify with ksj-mcp --help — if it shows a help message, the install worked.

To update later:

uv tool upgrade ksj-mcp

Step 4 — Register the server

Claude Desktop config file location:

Add the following block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ksj": {
      "command": "ksj-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Save and restart your AI client. You should see ksj listed in the tools/integrations panel.

Usage

Once connected, talk to your AI assistant naturally.

Uploading:

"Upload my journal photo from /Users/me/Desktop/RC-001.jpg"

"Process all the photos in my /Desktop/journal-scans folder"

Searching & browsing:

"Search my notes for ideas about spaced repetition"

"Show me everything tagged #machine-learning"

"What are my open questions about calculus?"

"Show me everything connected to RC-015"

Synthesis & review:

"Which topics am I ready to synthesize into a SYN page?"

"Show me my breakthrough timeline"

"How is my understanding of #linear-algebra progressing?"

Dream Capture:

"What symbols and themes keep appearing in my dreams?"

"Show me all my dream entries from this month"

Export & health:

"Export all captures tagged #ai as Markdown"

"Generate a study deck from my open questions"

"How's my journal practice looking?"

Available tools

Schema tag system

Use these prefixes anywhere on your journal pages — the server extracts them automatically.

RC, SYN, REV pages:

DC (Dream Capture) pages use a dream-specific variant:

Troubleshooting

"Tesseract OCR is not installed" Install Tesseract (Step 2 above) and restart your AI client.

"Could not detect a template ID" Make sure the template number (RC-001, SYN-001, etc.) is clearly visible in the photo. Try better lighting or a closer shot.

"RC-001 already exists in your knowledge base" You're re-uploading a page that's already stored. To replace it with the new photo (e.g. after a cleaner retake), ask your AI assistant to upload with force=True:

"Upload /path/to/RC-001.jpg with force=True"

"Server transport closed unexpectedly" / server not starting Run ksj-mcp --help in a terminal. If that works, the issue is with the Claude Desktop config — double-check it is valid JSON with "command": "ksj-mcp". If ksj-mcp is not found, re-run the install command from Step 3.

Server not appearing in tools panel Confirm ksj-mcp --help works in a terminal, verify the config file is valid JSON, and restart Claude Desktop after saving any config changes.

Data location

All your captures are stored locally in ~/.ksj-mcp/:

Files:

~/.ksj-mcp/captures.db     (SQLite database — all your captures and tags)
~/.ksj-mcp/images/         (copies of uploaded journal photos)

Your data is never sent anywhere and persists across updates.

Custom location: Set the KSJ_DATA_DIR environment variable in your config to store data elsewhere:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ksj": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/ChavezAILabs/ksj-mcp", "ksj-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "KSJ_DATA_DIR": "C:\\Users\\you\\Documents\\ksj-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

License

MIT — free to use, modify, and share.

Created by Chavez AI Labs LLC paul@chavezailabs.com "Personal knowledge operating system for the AI age"

Get the journal: Knowledge Synthesis Journal v2.0 (Amazon)