Install GNO

Claude Desktop integration

Install GNO as an MCP server in Claude Desktop for hybrid retrieval over your local documents.

gno mcp install --target claude-desktop adds GNO to Claude Desktop’s MCP config so Claude can run hybrid search over your local index in conversation. This page is the Claude Desktop target only.

Quickstart

bun install -g @gmickel/gno
gno setup ~/notes --name notes
gno mcp install --target claude-desktop

Quit and reopen Claude Desktop to pick up the new server.

Using it in conversation

“Search my notes for anything about the quarterly review process”
“What did I write about the deployment architecture last month?”
“Find related notes to this PDF and give me a summary”

Claude picks the right tool and cites the source document in the response.

Manual configuration

If the auto-install fails, add GNO to Claude Desktop’s config manually. Location depends on your OS:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gno": {
      "command": "gno",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The minimal form depends on gno being on the PATH a GUI application inherits, which on macOS is frequently not your shell’s PATH. The installer avoids the problem by recording an absolute Bun and package entrypoint. Inspect what it would write first:

gno mcp install --dry-run --json

What Claude can actually read

The index includes PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, plain text, source code, and imported mail, calendar, transcript, and JSONL exports. Converted binaries stay read-only, so Claude can cite a page of a PDF but cannot edit it.

Retrieval is read-only by default. The fifteen mutating tools (create, update, move, capture, reindex) require the explicit write opt-in, and authentication alone never enables them.

Verifying and troubleshooting