Local-first file-organization tools for your AI agent: tag, query, and digest a folder. No cloud.
Quick Install
Automated & IDE SetupCopy the AI prompt to install this server into Claude Code, Cursor, or another agent — or use 1-click editor setup below.
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Manual Client & Custom JSON ConfigExpand JSON ▾
Client Config & Setup
Choose your client or environment
Target File:
💡 Paste the JSON block into your client's configuration file under mcpServers, then restart the application.
Documentation Overview
Cairn
A local-first, open-source harness for organizing your files with an AI agent.
Point Claude Code, Codex, Cursor — any MCP client — at a folder, and your agent gains a full file-organization toolset: list, read, search, grep, edit, move, tag, import documents, and semantically retrieve. No account, no cloud, no UI required. Your files never leave your machine.
Then ask your agent to "organize this folder and tag everything" — it will, using tools that run locally over your own files.
A cairn is a stack of stones that marks a trail. This one keeps your files in order and shows the way through them.
Quickstart (2 minutes)
If you use Claude Code, setup is one command — the only prerequisite is
uv, which provides uvx:
Reopen Claude Code and ask:
"Organize this folder and tag everything."
Cairn's tools run locally over your files — reads happen freely, and any move/rename/edit asks for confirmation first. The first run auto-downloads the package (~5s); no clone, no build, no account.
[!TIP] Point
--workspaceat a copy of some notes for your first run — Cairn can move, rename, and edit files.
Using Codex? Same one-command flow (then run /mcp in a session to confirm):
Using Cursor or another MCP client? Same package, JSON config:
~ is expanded by Cairn, so ~/Documents/notes works in the CLI and in config files alike.
Just want to poke at it, no agent?
Why a harness
The agent-harness ecosystem converged on a clear pattern: the model and the agent loop are commodities supplied by the client (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode). The durable value is the tools and the local data. So Cairn ships tools, not an agent — the client provides the loop, the approval prompts (driven by our tool annotations), and the chat. Cairn is just the local file-organization toolset that snaps into whatever harness you already use.
Architecture
Everything is a thin adapter over one standard-library core, so the faces can never drift.
Use it
In Claude Code / Codex / Cursor (primary):
The server exposes read-only tools (list, read, search, grep, retrieve) that the client runs freely, and destructive tools (move, delete, edit) that it confirms first — driven by MCP tool annotations, so you get approval prompts with no UI of ours.
As a CLI:
With the optional web UI:
The .uni format
A .uni file is a small JSON document — { uuid, content: "<html>", metadata, tags } — with tags stored in the file. A workspace is just a directory: fully
portable, no external database. Source documents (docx/pdf/pptx/…) import into
editable .uni docs; the originals are kept by default.
Local-first & bring-your-own-key
- No account, no login, no cloud sync. The filesystem is the source of truth.
- The default retriever is lexical and needs nothing. Embeddings are opt-in and
bring-your-own-key (any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including local servers
like Ollama or LM Studio); vectors live in a local SQLite index under
<workspace>/.cairn/and never leave your machine.
Roadmap
Cairn is young. Rough direction, and where help is most welcome:
- More document faces — richer frontmatter support (nested metadata, dates), and round-tripping edits back into imported source formats.
- Smarter digests — summaries that use an embedding model when one is
configured, and saved views (
.cairn/views/*.md). - More retrieval backends — pluggable rerankers; first-class local-model presets (Ollama, LM Studio) beyond the generic OpenAI-compatible path.
- Editor/agent integrations — thin recipes for wiring Cairn into common MCP clients and note-taking setups.
- Packaging — signed releases and a Homebrew formula.
Have a use case that doesn't fit? Open an issue or start a discussion.
Contributing
Contributions of every size are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md
for the project layout, dev setup, and how to add a tool. Good first issues are
labeled good first issue.
Develop
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Cairn
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