noglow-mcp

noglow-mcp

Drops a short text fragment straight into noglow, the titleless scratchpad.

Exposes a single tool, drop(text), that places a plaintext fragment into the slot you set as the drop target (settings → general; default slot 8). Newlines and formatting survive intact, so you can read it, tweak it, and paste it somewhere else. Dragging the same text out of a terminal mangles the wrapping.

Requires the noglow desktop app. The drop reaches the app running on the same machine. Download for macOS or Windows.

The channel is source-neutral: this server is the first caller, but any local tool can drive the same mechanism (noglow --drop-file <path>).

How it works

• drop(text) validates the length (≤1500 chars), writes the text to a uniquely-named temp file, and spawns the noglow binary with --drop-file <path>.
• The text travels as a file (path-only on argv), never as a literal argv string. That preserves newlines, quotes, $, and backticks losslessly, and keeps the text out of ps.
• noglow receives the payload via tauri-plugin-single-instance (running app) or on cold boot (launched-with-the-flag), reads + deletes the temp file, and appends the text to the target slot through normal state. It then switches to that slot, focuses the window, and shows a received toast.

Install

Claude Code

claude mcp add -s user noglow -- npx -y --prefer-offline noglow-mcp@latest

Cursor / other stdio MCP clients

Run the server with:

npx -y --prefer-offline noglow-mcp@latest

or add it to your client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noglow": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "--prefer-offline", "noglow-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Env

• NOGLOW_BIN overrides the noglow binary path. It defaults to /Applications/noglow.app/Contents/MacOS/noglow on macOS, and to %LOCALAPPDATA%\noglow\noglow.exe on Windows (the per-user NSIS install location). Set it explicitly for a per-machine Windows install under Program Files, or to point at a dev build (src-tauri/target/debug/noglow).

Usage discipline

drop fires only on an explicit user request ("send it to noglow", "drop it in the inbox"). An agent may offer to drop when the moment is natural, but never drops unprompted. It is for short take-it-elsewhere fragments, not code blocks, command output, long analysis, or anything meant for permanent storage. The 1500-character cap enforces that.

Links

• noglow (product page and download)
• Changelog

License

MIT