Claude Connector

The Claude Connector lets Claude Desktop answer questions about your actual coursework — “what’s due this week?”, “summarise my biology notes”, “what do I need on the final to keep a B?” — using live data from your Atlas vault.

Everything runs locally on your Mac. No account, no cloud, nothing leaves your device.

Under the hood it’s a standard Model Context Protocol server over loopback HTTP. Claude Desktop is simply the first client — nothing about the tools or the transport is Claude-specific.

The connector ships pre-installed with Atlas, under Plugins ▸ Claude Connector. It stays off until you turn it on.

Enable it

Open Plugins in the sidebar and select Claude Connector.
Flip the Enable toggle.

Atlas starts a small server on your own machine — bound to 127.0.0.1 on a random free port, reachable from nothing but your Mac — and writes the bridge script Claude Desktop needs.

Connect Claude Desktop

One click

In the connector panel, click Configure Claude Desktop. Atlas finds Claude’s config file, backs it up first, merges in an atlas server entry (leaving any other MCP servers you already have untouched), and asks you to restart Claude Desktop.

By hand

If you’d rather do it yourself, click “Grab the config snippet” and merge this into the mcpServers object in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atlas": {
      "command": "/Applications/Atlas.app/Contents/MacOS/Atlas",
      "args": ["/Users/you/Library/Application Support/Atlas/mcp/atlas-mcp-shim.cjs"],
      "env": { "ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE": "1" }
    }
  }
}

Save it and restart Claude Desktop.

What Claude can see

By default the connector is read-only, and every tool is individually toggleable — untick one and Claude can’t call it.

Tool	What Claude gets
`list_tasks`	Tasks incl. subtasks, priority and deadline — filterable by status, subject or due-window
`get_deadlines`	Tasks and exams due within N days — plus anything already overdue, flagged `overdue: true`; the window starts at the beginning of your local day, sorted
`get_schedule`	Calendar events, including Apple Calendar-mirrored ones
`list_subjects`	Subjects with their weighted grade average
`get_notes_for_subject`	Notes linked to a subject, newest-edited first
`search_notes`	Full-text search across your notes, with snippets
`read_note`	A specific note’s markdown content
`what_if_grade`	Your projected average if you scored X on an upcoming assessment

Your settings, your API keys, and anything outside your vault are never exposed.

Letting Claude make changes

Writes are off by default. Turn on Allow task creation & completion and Claude gains exactly two more tools:

create_task — add a task, natural-language friendly ("essay draft friday 14:00 #norwegian"),
complete_task — mark a task done, or reopen it.

Every successful write pops a notification in Atlas — “Claude added a task: …” — so nothing changes silently. There is no note-writing tool. Claude can read your notes; it can never edit them.

Privacy and security

Local only. The server binds 127.0.0.1 and rejects any request that isn’t from your own machine. It sends nothing to the internet.
Token-authenticated. Every request needs a random bearer token, stored with locked-down permissions alongside the port. Regenerate it any time.
Enforced server-side. The per-tool toggles and the write gate are checked inside Atlas — not merely hidden in the UI. A disabled tool cannot be called even by a misbehaving client.
Rate-limited, so a looping client can’t hammer your data.
Auditable. A Recent activity log shows the last ~20 calls — time, tool, a one-line summary, ok or error — with writes flagged distinctly. Clear it whenever you like.

Troubleshooting

“Atlas is not running — open the app.” The bridge answers even when Atlas is closed, but the tools need the app running. Launch Atlas and try again.
Claude doesn’t see the connector. Check that you restarted Claude Desktop after configuring, and that Enable is on in Atlas.
Changed the token? Re-run Configure Claude Desktop, then restart Claude Desktop.