Filamental doesn’t ask you to move in. Your notes stay as Markdown in a folder on your disk, so whatever already reads files can still read them, and the assistant you already pay for can build inside the same space you are looking at rather than handing you another document. Every route below is free on every plan, permanently.
Claude Desktop
One click, then restart Claude
The only route that configures itself. Settings, AI Integrations, Connect to Claude Desktop, and Claude can read and write the space you have open. It follows whichever space that is, so switching one doesn’t mean setting it up again.
Read it →Claude Code
An .mcp.json you can commit
Configured per project rather than globally, which means the connection lives in the repository and everyone who clones it gets the same one. There is also a route with no MCP at all, where the agent simply reads the folder.
Read it →Cursor
The same connection, in the editor
One JSON file, either once for every project or inside a single one. What it buys you is somewhere to keep the reasoning a codebase can’t hold, in a form the model beside you can read back.
Read it →VS Code
The one with a different key
Same server, same transport, but VS Code reads servers rather than mcpServers and wants an explicit stdio type. Paste the usual block in and it is ignored with no error at all, which is the whole reason this has a page.
Read it →LM Studio
A local model on local files
For work that isn’t allowed to leave the machine. The model runs on your hardware, the files sit on your disk, and there is no account anywhere in the arrangement. Worth reading the honest part about small models first.
Read it →Obsidian
Your vault as a 3D graph, in a tab
A free community plugin renders the whole vault as a physics simulation inside Obsidian, where every note is a node and every wikilink a connection. The desktop app reads the same folder when you want typed relationships on top.
Read it →Mermaid
Paste the code, walk into the diagram
Any AI that writes Mermaid can hand you a structure, which includes the locked-down one your employer gave you. Paste the code, assign the types as it builds, and what arrives is a real space rather than a picture.
Read it →Markdown files
Point it at the folder you already keep
There is no database and no proprietary file. A node is a Markdown file with its relationships written into the front matter, which is why anything that reads files can read your structure, including an agent you point at the folder.
Read it →Your own API key
Sixteen providers, in a window inside the app
Paste a key from whoever you already pay and it works out which provider it is. The header always says which model you are talking to, because that’s the only honest way to run one. We never see the key or the conversation.
Read it →Those are the ones we have written setup for, not the limit. The server speaks stdio, which is the standard local transport, so any client that can start a local process and talk to it will work, Cherry Studio and Hermes among them. Open WebUI is the exception: its MCP support is HTTP only, by design, so it needs a proxy we do not support.
Five of them are the same connection. Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and LM Studio all reach the same local server over the same protocol, and what differs between them is which file the config goes in. Pick yours, paste one JSON entry, and your AI can read and write the space you are working in. Claude Desktop is the only one that configures itself.
One needs nothing from us at all. Pointing an agent at the folder works because a space is Markdown files, so there is no server, no config and no version to keep in step. It is the only route that reads a space on a machine with no Filamental on it, which makes it the one that matters when somebody sends you a folder.
One is a chat window inside the application, connected with an API key you already have, and it reaches just as far as the connection above. The difference is what stands behind it: a key arrives with no memory and no view of your other files, so it is somewhere to work rather than somewhere your accumulated knowledge already lives.
Two are one-way and finish immediately. A Mermaid diagram becomes a structure once, and the Obsidian plugin draws a vault without changing anything in it. Neither is a live connection and neither is trying to be, which is why both need nothing installed and nothing configured.
The full comparison, including what each one cannot do, is in AI Connections and Prompting, which is also what the application’s own help shows you.
An AI already running on your machine knows a great deal about your professional life. It has your memory files, whatever folders you have opened to it and the accumulated residue of every conversation you have had with it, while Filamental knows the contents of one folder. The interesting direction is therefore outward, not in.
Until now the only things that assistant could hand you were prose, a document or a deck. A live connection gives it one more: it can write a navigable structure instead, with the categories, the dependencies and the directions still in it. Then, because that structure is a folder of Markdown files, whoever you send it to can point their own assistant at it and have the whole thing read back natively. Out of one machine, into another, with nothing flattened on the way.
That is the case for the four MCP routes specifically. The built-in chat window reaches exactly as far into a space and is the better answer if you want a live connection without installing anything, but an API key arrives with no history behind it, so it is somewhere to work rather than somewhere your institutional knowledge already lives.
Nine routes into a small application usually means nine pieces of plumbing, each one a thing that can break when somebody else ships a release. That isn’t what is happening here, and the difference is worth knowing because it is what makes the list durable.
Two facts do all the work. The first is that a space is a folder of Markdown files with the relationships written into the front matter, so anything able to read a file can read your structure without a connector, a permission dialog or an intermediate format. The second is that MCP is an open standard rather than a partnership, so any client that speaks it can talk to the local server that ships inside Filamental. We didn’t negotiate with anybody, and Cursor has never heard of us.
That is also why all of it is free on every plan and always will be. We aren’t sitting in the middle of any of these connections, so there is nothing for us to meter.
Filamental doesn’t talk to a CRM, an issue tracker, a case management system, a practice management system or a farm platform. It has no server to talk to them from, no account to authenticate with and no webhook to receive. That isn’t a roadmap item we haven’t reached yet but the shape of the thing, which is a desktop application reading files on your own machine.
In practice the missing integration costs less than it sounds like it should, since there is nothing to scope, no credentials to request and no security review to sit through before you can start thinking. Whatever the other system holds, you can drag the file onto the node it concerns and it opens in whatever normally opens it.
If the route you want isn’t here, tell us rather than assuming. Adding a model provider is usually a small job, so do ask.
Free on the Personal plan, permanently, with no account and no card. Every route on this page is on it.