An AI that only talks is a chatbot. An AI that can act — query your database, list your pull requests, create a ticket — is a tool. Znote 4.5 crosses that line.
Znote now speaks MCP (Model Context Protocol), the open standard that connects AI models to real tools. It's the same protocol behind Claude Desktop, and the ecosystem is huge: GitHub, Postgres, Slack, Linear, Notion, Stripe, your filesystem — hundreds of servers, most of them official, all of them pluggable into your notes.
One line in a note
Add a server to your vault, then write tools= on an AI block:
```ai tools=github
Open PRs and yesterday's commits on acme/webapp — draft my standup brief.
```Press play. The model calls the server's tools — as many as it needs, in a loop — and the answer lands below the block, saved in your note as rendered Markdown. Re-run it Monday: same block, fresh data, the old answer replaced.
tools=postgres and the AI sees your actual schema, writes the SQL, answers with a table. tools=linear and your meeting notes become issues while you write them. tools=github,myFunction mixes MCP servers with your own JS functions — they've always been able to be tools too.
One config file, the standard format
Servers are declared in your vault's .znote/mcp.json, using the same format as Claude Desktop. That's a deliberate choice: every MCP server README on the internet shows a config snippet — and it pastes into Znote as-is.
{
"mcpServers": {
"github": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],
"env": { "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "ghp_..." }
}
}
}Even better: when a note contains a config block like this one, Znote shows a "＋ mcp.json" button on it — one click merges the servers into your vault. Which means an MCP setup guide written as a note is also its own installer.
A new Settings → MCP screen lists your servers, tests the connection, and shows every tool a server exposes. If a runtime is missing, the error tells you the exact install command for your OS — not a generic "command not found".
Local-first, like everything else
This matters: MCP servers in Znote are local processes. Znote starts them, talks to them over stdio, and stops them when you close the window. Your GitHub token, your database credentials, your Slack access — they live in your vault's config, are used by processes on your machine, and go directly to the services you configured. There is no Znote cloud in the middle, because that's the whole point of this app.
Remote-only servers (Linear, Notion, Sentry…) work too, through the standard mcp-remote bridge that handles the OAuth flow in your browser.
Answers that stay
One more piece shipped with 4.5: AI block answers are now persisted in the note — as regular rendered Markdown, delimited by invisible markers, replaced on every re-run instead of piling up. Combined with MCP, that changes what a note is: the prompt, the tools, and the latest result, in one file. Your Monday standup, your monthly revenue report, your sprint summary — each is a note you open and press play.
And since it's all plain Markdown, it works in your Obsidian vault too. The companion plugin even gives ai blocks a purple accent and a "Run in Znote" button — click in Obsidian, run in Znote, read the answer back in Obsidian.
Start with the examples
We published 22 ready-to-run examples — one note per server: Filesystem, Postgres, SQLite, GitHub, Playwright, Linear, Jira, Notion, Slack, Google Workspace, Stripe, Sentry, Grafana, Zapier and more. Each has the exact config, the prerequisites, and prompts you can run as-is. The filesystem server is the best first step: no token, no account, and your AI can suddenly read that log file you were about to copy-paste.
Znote is a local-first Markdown editor with executable code blocks and AI grounded in your notes. Opens Obsidian vaults natively.