recall-mcp

TL;DR: Local semantic search MCP server over four sources - your markdown docs, Granola meeting transcripts, Wispr Flow transcripts, and your own past Claude Code sessions. Ask Claude "what did we decide about X?" and it finds relevant content by meaning. Runs entirely on your machine - no API keys, no cloud, no cost.

Give Claude Code long-term memory over your notes, meetings, and past conversations with itself. It searches by meaning, runs locally, and costs nothing.

What this is

A Model Context Protocol server that indexes four sources into a local vector database: your markdown files, Granola meeting transcripts, Wispr Flow transcripts, and the dialogue from your own past Claude Code sessions. Claude Code can then search across everything by meaning, not just keywords.

You ask something like "what did we decide about the onboarding flow?" and it surfaces relevant chunks from your docs, meeting recordings, and prior conversations, even if those exact words never appeared.

How it works:

Markdown docs + Granola + Wispr Flow + Claude Code sessions
           |
           v
  Ollama (nomic-embed-text)    <- local embedding model, no API key
           |
           v
       ChromaDB                <- local vector database on localhost:8000
           |
           v
    7 MCP tools                <- Claude Code calls these during conversations

Auto-indexing runs every 15 minutes in the background via a macOS LaunchAgent.

Example

You ask Claude Code: "what did we decide about the onboarding flow?"

recall-mcp searches your docs and meeting transcripts by meaning and returns the relevant chunks:

Source: meetings/product-sync-2026-03-14.md (similarity: 0.82)
"We agreed to cut the walkthrough video and ship a checklist instead.
Jamie owns the copy, targeting next sprint."

Source: docs/onboarding/decisions.md (similarity: 0.79)
"Checklist approach approved — three steps max, no modal,
inline in the dashboard."

Claude uses these results to answer your question with the actual context from your notes and meetings.

Works with

recall-mcp uses the standard MCP stdio transport, so it works with any MCP-compatible client:

The MCP config block is the same across all of them. This README uses Claude Code as the example, but the server doesn't care which client connects to it.

Note: Setup requires comfort with the terminal, or the ability to point your AI tool at this repo and ask it to set things up for you. For example, you can paste this README into Claude Code or Claude Desktop and ask it to clone the repo and run the setup script on your behalf.

Related MCP server: doc-index

Sources

recall-mcp indexes four kinds of content. Each is tagged with a sourceType so you can filter a search to just one kind (semantic_search accepts a sourceTypes filter). Every source is optional - if you don't have Granola, Wispr, or Claude Code sessions, doc indexing still works on its own.

Claude Code session capture

This is the source most people won't have seen before, so here's exactly how it works.

Claude Code stores every session as a JSONL file under ~/.claude/projects/<project-slug>/<session-id>.jsonl, one JSON object per line. recall-mcp reads those files and indexes the dialogue only - the actual back-and-forth between you and Claude. Everything else is dropped:

• Tool calls and tool results are skipped - they're mostly file dumps already indexed as your docs, and they'd bury the real conversation in noise.

• Thinking blocks are skipped.

• Subagent sidechains (isSidechain) are skipped - only the main conversation is kept.

• Harness noise is stripped from your messages: <system-reminder> blocks, slash-command wrapper tags, system notifications, interrupt markers, and local-command-stdout are all removed before indexing.

What's left is rendered as a clean User: / Claude: transcript, chunked, embedded, and stored. Each session is titled [project/path] <title>, using the session's custom title, then its AI-generated title, then the first user message as a fallback. Sessions with less than 500 characters of real dialogue are dropped as too thin to be useful.

Indexing is incremental by file mtime - unchanged sessions are skipped, and a changed session has its old chunks replaced wholesale. Sessions that were active in the last hour are deferred so an in-progress conversation isn't re-embedded every cycle; it gets picked up once it goes quiet.

The project-slug directory name (e.g. -Users-tenzin-Strategy-projects-apollo) is converted back to a readable path (Strategy/projects/apollo) for the title, so search results tell you which project a conversation came from.

Prerequisites

• macOS (LaunchAgent setup is macOS-specific; the core server works anywhere)

• Node.js 18+ - brew install node

• Ollama - ollama.com or brew install ollama

• uv (for running ChromaDB) - brew install uv

• Granola desktop app - granola.ai - only needed if you want meeting transcript search

Setup

1. Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/thetenzinwoser/recall-mcp.git
cd recall-mcp
npm install
npm run build

2. Install the embedding model

brew services start ollama
ollama pull nomic-embed-text

First pull is ~274MB. After that it's cached.

3. Run setup

./scripts/setup.sh

This will:

• Ask where your markdown docs live (DOCS_PATH)

• Write a .env file

• Generate LaunchAgent plists from templates and load them

• Start ChromaDB and schedule auto-indexing

• Run an initial index across all available sources (docs, Granola, Wispr Flow, Claude Code sessions)

• Print the MCP config block to paste into Claude Code

4. Add to your MCP client

Add this to your client's MCP config (see the "Works with" table above for file locations):

"recall": {
  "type": "stdio",
  "command": "node",
  "args": ["/absolute/path/to/recall-mcp/dist/server.js"]
}

Use the exact path printed at the end of setup.sh. Then restart your client. In Claude Code, run /mcp to confirm it connected.

Tools

get_transcript details

• Title search with date: { searchTitle: "team sync March 14" } - extracts the date and fuzzy-matches the title

• Explicit date: { searchTitle: "team sync", date: "2026-03-14" } - when multiple meetings share a title

• Partial ID: First 8 characters of a meeting UUID is enough

• List recent: { listRecent: 20 } to browse recent meetings with IDs

Configuration

All settings have sensible defaults. The only one most people need is DOCS_PATH.

Copy .env.example to .env and edit:

cp .env.example .env

ChromaDB runs on localhost:8000 by default. This is not configurable without editing the LaunchAgent plist directly.

Granola integration

recall-mcp reads your Granola auth token from the Granola desktop app's local data. No separate API key or login needed - just have Granola installed and signed in.

Auth token location: ~/Library/Application Support/Granola/supabase.json

If you don't use Granola, the doc indexing still works fine. Transcript-related tools will return errors, which Claude handles gracefully.

Manual commands

Reindex now (instead of waiting for the 15-min interval):

cd /path/to/recall-mcp && npx tsx src/scripts/auto-index.ts

Check ChromaDB is running:

curl -s http://localhost:8000/api/v2/heartbeat

Check what's indexed:

# Use the index_status MCP tool, or check logs:
tail -f /path/to/recall-mcp/logs/auto-index.log

Rebuild after pulling updates:

npm run build

Restart ChromaDB:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.recall.chromadb.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.recall.chromadb.plist

Troubleshooting

semantic_search returns nothing / MCP not connecting

• Run /mcp in Claude Code to check server status

• Make sure dist/server.js exists (npm run build)

• Verify the path in ~/.claude.json is absolute and correct

ChromaDB not running

curl -s http://localhost:8000/api/v2/heartbeat
# Should return: {"nanosecond heartbeat": ...}

If it fails, check logs/chromadb-stderr.log or reload the LaunchAgent.

Ollama errors

ollama list
# nomic-embed-text should appear

If not: ollama pull nomic-embed-text

Granola auth fails Make sure the Granola desktop app is installed and you're logged in. The token file should exist at ~/Library/Application Support/Granola/supabase.json.

Results feel stale Force a reindex: npx tsx src/scripts/auto-index.ts. The auto-indexer only picks up file changes and new meetings - if you renamed files or restructured folders, a manual run helps.

Stack

License

MIT