Devon MCP Server

Devon

DEVONthink MCP server for Claude Code. Zero-config setup — one command and you're done.

33 tools for full DEVONthink integration — search, CRUD, AI, tags, smart groups, email threading, and more. All MIT-licensed, zero external dependencies beyond the MCP SDK.

Quick start

If you have Claude Code, just ask:

"Hey Claude, clone Devon from github.com/mnott/Devon and set it up for me"

Claude will clone the repo, build it, configure ~/.claude.json, and enable the server. Restart Claude Code and all 33 DEVONthink tools are available.

What it provides

With this server running, Claude Code can:

• Search and browse all open DEVONthink databases
• Read document content (PDFs, Markdown, plain text, HTML, rich text)
• Create, update, and delete records
• Move, replicate, duplicate, and convert records across groups
• Add and remove tags, classify documents, manage metadata
• Ask DEVONthink's built-in AI about documents and create summaries
• Cross-reference emails with archived documents
• List and navigate database groups
• List smart groups and smart rules (not accessible via AppleScript)
• Parse EML headers for email thread correlation
• Read and copy column layout configurations

Requirements

• macOS (DEVONthink is macOS-only)
• DEVONthink 3 or 4 installed and running
• Node.js >= 18
• Claude Code

Installation

Option 1: Ask Claude (recommended)

In Claude Code, ask Claude to set it up:

"Clone Devon from github.com/mnott/Devon into ~/dev/ai and configure it"

Claude clones, builds, configures ~/.claude.json, and enables the MCP server.

Option 2: Setup wizard

npx @tekmidian/devon setup

Interactive CLI that checks prerequisites, configures ~/.claude.json, and enables the server.

Option 3: Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/mnott/Devon ~/dev/ai/devon
cd ~/dev/ai/devon
npm install
npm run build
node dist/index.js setup

Manual configuration

If you prefer to configure Claude Code manually, add this to the mcpServers section of ~/.claude.json:

"devonthink": {
  "type": "stdio",
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "@tekmidian/devon", "serve"],
  "env": {}
}

Or if you have it installed locally:

"devonthink": {
  "type": "stdio",
  "command": "node",
  "args": ["/path/to/devon/dist/index.js", "serve"],
  "env": {}
}

Restart Claude Code after editing ~/.claude.json.

Tools

All 33 tools organized by category.

Application

Database

Records

Groups

Search

Tags

Web

Intelligence

AI

Custom extensions

These five tools extend the core DEVONthink scripting API with functionality not available through AppleScript.