Tips

Answering dev questions based on my tech notes using MCP + Claude

Takuya Matsuyama

18 Mar 2025 — 5 min read

In the previous post, I integrated my note-taking app Inkdrop with Claude's MCP:

I've updated the MCP server for Inkdrop, which has got the following new tools:

list-notes: List all notes in a specified notebook.
- Required inputs:
  - bookId: The notebook ID. It always starts with 'book:'.
- Optional inputs:
  - tagIds: An array of tag IDs to filter. Each starts with 'tag:'.
  - keyword: Keyword to filter notes.
  - sort: Sort field (updatedAt, createdAt, or title). Default: updatedAt.
  - descending: Reverse the order of output. Default: true.
- Note: Results include truncated note bodies (200 characters). Use read-note to get full content.
list-tags: Retrieve a list of all tags.

Example usage: Answering questions

Vlog is also available:

I've been exploring practical use cases of MCP with Inkdrop. I've got some questions from my audience:

Hello Takuya !
I am a long time youtuber viewer of yours. I really like your content and came across you blog posts concerning Inkdrop.
I am actually developing a xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, in xxxxxxx.
I want an offline first app, but that could sync with the cloud. So I thought about going with the same technology you used for Inkdrop, CouchDB and Electron for the app.

I had some questions if you could help me :

Should I use PouchDB for my Electron app or a regular CouchDB server in local ? I've seen that with PouchDB, it creates a file containing the database, but I feel like it could be problematic in the future if the database grows and I feel like using a standard database approach with maybe a CouchDB server in local, what do you think? Would you advise me to go with the file approach ?

I've seen you used Amazon EC2 instances. Would you recommend me using the same PaaS as Amazon or should I go self hosting with maybe Coolify and Docker image for the cloud server CouchDB, knowing that Coolify doesn't have the database as a choice, I would have to specify a custom image with CouchDB. I am curious if you think the EC2 instance would be better, financially wise also, because I would also look for cheaper ways.

Did you encounter any problems concerning updating for example fields of documents in NoSQL CouchDB ? I mean by that, imagine your Inkdrop document would need another field that you would implement, would you implement it only via the app or would you update all the documents on the cloud to have a normalized "schema" for your documents ? This question may seem difficult to understand, but what I really mean is for example : I have that PRODUCT collection that I would like to have another field 'taxPercentage' that I forgot to add in the first place and would like to add after the app has been deployed. When you develop the app, are you just adding this field in the app and letting the users save the product with the taxPercentage new field or you would update their databases overall ?

For your Inkdrop app, I guess you have the two ways of syncing, local -> cloud and cloud -> local right ? Or just one way ? I mean obviously you would have 2 ways syncing otherwise if you use the app on the smartphone and the desktop, you gotta have the two ways syncing otherwise they would not show the same data. Would you advise me to do the same ? I think it could be good for me too, for example if a shop has multiple cash registers, we would like them to have the same database right ? Thus having to enable two ways of syncing ?

I am a supporter of normalized databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL, but the syncing part is absolutely vital for my app and to implement it with such databases is a pain. That's why CouchDB is the solution with its syncing capabilities, but it is a NoSQL then. So the choice of CouchDB is certain.

Thank you very much for delivering such quality content by the way, and I hope to hear from you soon !
From a developer from xxxxxxx,
行ってらっしゃい

So, he would like to know my thoughts on using CouchDB, PouchDB, and Electron for building offline-first apps.

I usually don't answer these personal questions since I simply don't have time for it, but this time, I thought it'd be interesting to generate answers with Claude and my MCP server, based on my tech notes stocked in my Inkdrop database.

Let's try it.

Check if Claud can access my notes

First, I tried to check if Claude is aware of my knowledge via MCP:

Can you tell me what knowledge about PouchDB/CouchDB/Electron app development in my Inkdrop notes? Can you summarize them?

Then, Claude summarized my related notes by automatically thinking of keywords to search. Cool:

Tip: Use `dev-tools` plugin to quickly copy IDs

There is an official plugin that allows you to quickly copy a note ID, notebook ID, and tag ID via context menus:

dev-tools - Inkdrop Plugins

A plugin page of dev-tools for Inkdrop - Developer tools for Inkdrop

Inkdrop Plugins

It was originally meant to help develop plugins but it's also useful for specifying a note or notebook to AI.

I used it to tell Claude which note to read and update.

Generating answers

Prompt:

I'd like to answer the following questions from my audience. I created a note with id='note:6YX9hlIT'. Please generate some answers and append it to that note.
I've been taking tech notes about Electron app development in the Inkdrop/App notebook. And also there are a lot of notes about operating CouchDB servers in the "Ops" notebook. Please refer to these notes to create answers.