tic-mcp

An unofficial MCP server for Tic, the free floating sticky-note task app for macOS.

It lets an AI assistant read your Tic lists. You can ask "what is on my list?" and get an answer. You can also paste a screenshot onto a task and ask the assistant to look at it.

This project is not made by the Tic developer and is not connected to them. Tic's own source code is at kasvith/tic. Tested against Tic 0.4.0.

What it can do

You name a list or a task by part of its text. Capital letters do not matter.

Related MCP server: DB Insights MCP Server

It only reads

The server never writes to your notes. Every connection opens the database in read-only mode, so it cannot change your data even if there is a bug.

This is on purpose. See Why it does not write.

Install

You need macOS, Tic, and uv.

git clone https://github.com/charith-heymilo/tic-mcp.git
cd tic-mcp
uv sync

Add it to Claude Code:

claude mcp add -s user tic -- "$PWD/.venv/bin/python" -m tic_mcp.server

Then restart Claude Code. The tools show up after a restart.

To run the tests:

uv run pytest

The server reads ~/Library/Application Support/Tic/tic.sqlite by default. Set TIC_DB to point it somewhere else.

How Tic stores notes

Tic uses SQLite through GRDB. There are three tables.

Some details are easy to get wrong:

• IDs are 16-byte blobs, not text. Each one is a UUID.

• Times are UTC, but no time zone is stored. They look like local time. If you read them as local time, every value is off by your own offset.

• sortIndex has no gaps. It runs 0, 1, 2 and so on. To insert a task you must renumber the ones after it.

• Foreign keys are off by default, so ON DELETE CASCADE does not run unless you turn them on.

• Tic uses journal_mode=delete, so a writer locks the whole file.

Images

Tic stores plain PNG files, so a screenshot you paste onto a task reads back as-is.

Big images are made smaller first. The longest edge is capped at 1568 pixels. Claude reduces images to that size anyway, so no detail is lost and large screenshots do not waste tokens.

Resizing uses sips, which comes with macOS. This keeps the project free of an image library.

The crop box is reported, not applied. Tic saves a crop box for every image. Applying it needs a real image library, so the server sends the whole image and tells you when a crop exists. You see all of the screenshot, which is usually what you want.

Why it does not write

Tic has no API. There is no URL scheme, no AppleScript support, and no command line tool. The SQLite file is the only way in.

Writing is possible, but it works badly. What follows was measured, not guessed.

Tic does not see writes from other programs. Tic watches its database with GRDB, which only reports changes that Tic itself makes. A task added from outside stays hidden until Tic writes to the same table for its own reasons:

Writes from outside are not lost, though. Tic updates one record at a time. It does not rewrite a whole list. It also reads the database when it picks the next sortIndex. So a task added from outside stays where it is, and the order stays correct.

Restarting Tic loses your window layout. Tic decides where to put each window when it starts, then saves those new positions over the old ones. The notes open stacked on top of each other, and the old positions are gone. Writing the old positions back does not help, because the next start overwrites them again.

This rules out the obvious plan of "quit Tic, write, then start it again". It would cost you your window layout every time.

If writing is added later, the better way is to write while Tic runs, and tell the user that the change shows up when they next touch that list.

Files

tic_mcp/db.py       Read-only queries. Decodes UUIDs and UTC times
tic_mcp/images.py   Reads PNG sizes, and makes images smaller
tic_mcp/server.py   The four tools, and how their output is written
tests/              119 tests, including real stdio round trips

db.py returns data. server.py does all the formatting.

The server also checks Tic's list of migrations. If Tic adds one this code does not know about, the tool output says so. You get a warning instead of wrong data.

License

MIT