AI assistants

An AI assistant on your computer can look through your library and, only if you allow it, add to it. You turn this on yourself, choose how much the assistant may do, and can turn it off at any time. An assistant can never delete anything.

Koona Pin works with assistants through MCP, a common way for AI apps to use tools on your computer. Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, the ChatGPT desktop app and many other AI apps support it. The assistant’s app starts a small helper that comes with Koona Pin and talks to the app on the same computer; Koona Pin opens no network connection for it.

What assistants can do#

Ask in your own words, for example “find my article about SQLite search”. The assistant picks the tool.

With Read only, an assistant can:

• search your links by words in the title, address, description, notes or tags, optionally within a collection, a tag, Inbox, Favorites or the Reading list (at most 50 links at a time);
• open one link in full, with its description and your notes;
• list your collections and your tags.

With Read and add, it can also:

• save a web address (http or https) to Inbox; an address already in your library is not added again;
• add tags to a link;
• move a link into a collection that already exists;
• add a link to Favorites or take it off.

What stays yours:

• New links wait in Inbox, marked as saved by the assistant, so you decide whether to keep them. A link an assistant tags, files or stars also stays in Inbox until you sort it.
• Nothing is deleted. An assistant can’t delete links, empty the Trash or change your titles and notes.
• You can undo. CtrlZ⌘Z undoes each change an assistant made, as for your own.
• Your text is data. Titles, descriptions and notes reach the assistant as information, never as instructions to follow.

Note: What an assistant reads from your library becomes part of your conversation with it, and goes wherever that assistant sends your conversation. Choose Read only if it shouldn’t add anything, and turn the feature off when you don’t need it.

Turn it on#

1. Open Settings and find AI assistants.
2. Switch on Let AI assistants use your library. It is off until you do, and until then every request gets an error and nothing is read.
3. Under What assistants may do, choose Read only or Read and add. You can change it at any time.

The line under the switch then shows the last request, for example “On · last request from Claude Code today at 14:05”, or On · no requests yet. It is the quickest way to check that an assistant reached Koona Pin.

If Koona Pin is closed when an assistant uses a tool, it starts in the background (in the tray, or the menu bar on a Mac).

Connect Claude Desktop#

1. In Settings, under AI assistants, click How to connect… next to Connect an assistant.
2. On the Claude Desktop tab, click Save for Claude Desktop… and save koona-pin.mcpb (your Downloads folder is suggested).
3. Double-click the file, drag it into the Claude Desktop window, or in Claude Desktop open Settings → Extensions → Advanced settings → Install Extension….
4. Ask about your bookmarks. Claude asks before it uses a tool for the first time.

The package finds the installed Koona Pin, so app updates reach it without a new file. To edit the settings by hand instead, follow Or add it by hand on the same tab: in Claude Desktop open Settings → Developer → Edit Config and add what the dialog shows to claude_desktop_config.json.

Connect Claude Code#

1. In How to connect…, open the Claude Code tab.

2. Copy the command under Run in a terminal and run it. It adds Koona Pin for every project of your user, and looks like this, with the real path on your computer:

   claude mcp add --scope user koona-pin -- "<path to koonapin-mcp>"
   

3. In Claude Code, type /mcp: koona-pin shows as connected.

Connect Cursor and other apps#

1. In How to connect…, open the Custom tab.

2. Open your app’s MCP settings. Cursor, Windsurf, Zed and most other apps keep their servers in a JSON file.

3. Copy the JSON from the dialog into that file and save. It has this shape, with your real path:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "koona-pin": { "command": "<path to koonapin-mcp>" }
     }
   }
   

Some apps name the top key servers instead of mcpServers. The app then lists koona-pin with its tools.

Connect the ChatGPT desktop app#

In the ChatGPT desktop app, open Settings → MCP servers → Add server. Name it koona-pin, choose the type STDIO, and paste the command from the ChatGPT tab of the dialog. The Codex command-line tool shares this list: you can run the codex mcp add command shown under Or from a terminal instead.

This needs the current ChatGPT desktop app. ChatGPT in a web browser connects only to servers on the internet, so it can’t reach Koona Pin.

Turn it off#

Switch off Let AI assistants use your library in Settings. From then on every request gets an error and nothing is read, even though the assistant still lists Koona Pin. When you switch it on again, Koona Pin remembers the level you chose last. To remove Koona Pin from an assistant altogether, do it in that assistant’s settings.

If it doesn’t work#

• The dialog says part of Koona Pin (koonapin-mcp) is missing. Reinstall Koona Pin.
• The assistant reports an error. Check that the switch is on and the level allows what you asked: saving, tagging, moving and starring need Read and add.
• Still stuck? See Troubleshooting.