claude-desktop-bridge

Claude-Desktop-Bridge

Built for Claude Desktop users. If you only use the standalone claude CLI or Claude.ai in a browser, this isn't for you — skip to Where this works for the one exception.

The problem

Claude Desktop's Chat tab and Code tab live in the same app, one click apart. But they don't share a single byte of context.

Ask Claude something in Chat, switch to Code to actually build it — Claude in Code has no memory the conversation ever happened. Spend an hour in Code working through a decision, hop to Chat to think out loud about what's next — Chat starts from zero. Two tabs, one window, and no connection between them at all.

So close, yet so far. The workaround is re-explaining yourself every time you switch tabs — burning tokens and patience re-deriving context that existed ten seconds ago, one tab over.

The solution

Claude-Desktop-Bridge is a small local MCP server, installed once into Claude Desktop, that gives Chat and Code a shared, persistent knowledge vault. Save a note while working in Code, read it back in Chat five minutes later. Research something in Chat, recall it in Code without repeating yourself.

It's deliberately not a context dump. Instead of pasting whole documents or files into the conversation, Claude gets five narrow tools — save, retrieve, search, update, delete — so it pulls in only what's actually relevant, on demand, instead of loading everything every time.

Tool	Description
save_note	Save a new note (title, content, optional tags, optional project)
get_notes	Retrieve notes by id, tags, or project, most recent first
search_notes	Full-text search over note titles and content
update_note	Update an existing note's title, content, tags, or project
delete_note	Permanently delete a note by id

Notes can be tagged with an optional project field, so if you work across multiple codebases, the vault doesn't turn into one undifferentiated pile — each project's notes can be filtered independently.

Install

• Download claude-desktop-bridge.mcpb from Releases.
• Drag it onto the Claude Desktop window — or Settings → Extensions → Advanced settings → Install Extension…
• That's it. No configuration screen, nothing to fill in. The vault lives at ~/.claude-bridge/vault.db.

Use it

Once installed, just talk normally in either tab — Claude calls save_note, get_notes, search_notes, etc. on its own when it's useful, the same way it uses any other tool. You don't invoke anything manually.

A few things worth knowing:

• It's proactive, not automatic-automatic. Claude decides when something's worth saving or worth searching for — it's not logging every message. If you want something remembered, it helps to say so ("remember this for later").
• Tag by project if you work across multiple codebases. Ask Claude to filter by project when recalling notes, so a search in one repo's context doesn't surface notes from an unrelated one.
• Chat tab "Projects" (claude.ai-style, with Custom Instructions) don't auto-link to a Code tab folder. There's no protocol-level way for Chat to know which codebase it corresponds to. If you want a Chat Project to stay in sync with a specific repo's notes, say so explicitly in that Project's Custom Instructions — e.g. "This project corresponds to the my-repo codebase; use Claude-Desktop-Bridge with project: 'my-repo'."

Where this works

Surface	Works out of the box?
Claude Desktop — Chat tab	✅ Yes
Claude Desktop — Code tab (local sessions)	✅ Yes
Standalone claude CLI (terminal, Desktop not required)	⚠️ Needs one extra step
Claude Code on the Web / cloud sessions	❌ Not available (local-only server, no filesystem/network access from the cloud)

Chat and the Desktop Code tab both connect through the same install automatically — nothing extra to configure there.

The standalone terminal CLI (claude run directly, without the Desktop app open) doesn't read Desktop's extension config, so it won't see Claude-Desktop-Bridge unless you register it explicitly:

# macOS or WSL — imports every MCP server Desktop has configured
claude mcp add-from-claude-desktop

# Any platform, including Linux — register Claude-Desktop-Bridge directly,
# pointed at this repo's built server:
claude mcp add --scope user claude-desktop-bridge -- node /path/to/claude-desktop-bridge/server/index.js

--scope user makes it available in every terminal project, not just the one you ran the command from. Once added, claude mcp list should show claude-desktop-bridge connected — and it reads from the same ~/.claude-bridge/vault.db the Desktop extension uses, so notes saved from the terminal and notes saved from Desktop are the same vault.

Want notes to cost fewer tokens? cdb-companion is a small companion skill that compresses content before it hits save_note/update_note — drop it alongside this extension for a leaner vault.

Building from source

npm install
npm run build   # bundles src/index.ts -> server/index.js
npm run pack     # produces claude-desktop-bridge.mcpb

Requires Node.js 22+ (for the built-in node:sqlite module). Claude Desktop's own built-in Node.js runtime is used automatically when the installed extension runs — end users don't need Node installed separately.

Privacy Policy

Claude-Desktop-Bridge runs entirely on your own machine and makes no network requests.

• Data collection: Claude-Desktop-Bridge does not collect any data. No analytics, telemetry, or crash reporting of any kind.
• Usage and storage: Notes you save (titles, content, tags, and project labels) are stored exclusively in a local SQLite database at ~/.claude-bridge/vault.db on the device where the extension is installed.
• Third-party sharing: No data is ever transmitted anywhere. Claude-Desktop-Bridge has no server component and makes no outbound network connections.
• Data retention: Notes persist in the local database until you delete them (via the delete_note tool) or delete the database file yourself. Uninstalling the extension does not delete the database file.
• Contact: For questions about this policy, open an issue on this repository.

License

MIT