Connect an AI App

Open Settings › AI and connect Claude Desktop in one click, or set up Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, VS Code, Zed, LM Studio or any other MCP app by hand, and that app can search, read and edit your project from its own chat window.

Where: Settings (the menu button, top right) › AI › Connect an AI app

What it is

Filamental includes an MCP server, the standard way an AI app reaches tools outside itself. Connect an app to it and the AI works inside your project live: it searches, follows connectors, writes nodes and draws connections, and you see each change on the canvas. It's the same reach Filamental AI has, from the window you already work in.

The AI is briefed the moment it connects, with nothing to install, and the full guide and file format are there for it to read when a job calls for them. What We Tell Your AI shows the text.

Choose your app

Connect Claude Desktop: one click in Settings, and Claude follows whichever project you open.
Connect Other AI Apps: every other app, Copilot included, and any app that can start a local server, with a ready-made block for each.
Folder Access: an AI that can read your files works in the project folder directly, with or without MCP.
Files for Other AIs: two downloadable briefing files for AIs that can't connect, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.ai.

Before you connect

Open the project in Filamental once, on that computer. The server reads the index Filamental builds when a project opens, and never builds one itself. Without it, the server stops with "Filamental database not found". An AI that only has the folder can use Folder Access instead, which needs no index.

Node.js 22 or later has to be installed, since the server runs on it.

Which project the AI sees. An app with no project named in its settings, such as Claude Desktop connected in one click, works on whichever project you last opened in Filamental, and moves with you when you open another. An app whose settings name a project with --vault stays on that one. Filamental needn't be running, though you'll usually have it open to watch the changes land.

What the AI can do

Search names, notes and property values, and filter on any property, such as every Person whose status isn't archived.
Read a node with its whole neighbourhood as one document, or just the shape around it.
Find the shortest chain of connectors between two nodes and read it back hop by hop, the route the Pathfinder lights.
Ask for a short orientation to a project it hasn't seen: the classifications and connectors in use, the most connected nodes, the load-bearing ones that would split the structure if they went, how many separate groups there are, and what's unconnected or has no notes.
Create, change and delete nodes and connectors, and move a heading's section into a node of its own, or fold it back.

It uses your classifications and connector types but can't create them, so add any new ones in the Left Panel when it asks. Filamental AI can create them itself.

Tips

Changes made over MCP aren't on Filamental's undo list. Ask the AI to put them back. See Undo and Redo.
Key values travel. A Key property is kept out of Filamental's search, but an AI that opens the node reads it like any other value. See Properties.
Talk a subject through, then say "turn this into a Filamental project". Later, ask it to read the project again and it's briefed in seconds.

How this helps you

Use it when you live in another AI window already, or want an AI that can also reach the rest of your computer, such as Claude Code working across a repository and your project at once.

Build a Project from a Folder of Documents: a connected AI reads your documents and builds a project.
AI on Your Own Computer: the in-app route for local models.
Export for AI: one file, for AIs that can't connect.