Scratchpad: add to a noteAn assistant is only as useful as what it knows.
And most of what you'd want it to know is already written down, in your notes. The plan for a trip, three quotes for the kitchen, the list of things to ask the accountant.
Copying them into a chat one at a time gets old quickly.
So Scratchpad speaks MCP, the protocol assistants use to reach tools. It's an ordinary remote MCP server over HTTPS, nothing specific to one app, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, and anything else that can add one can work with your notes.
What It Can Do
You ask in plain words.
- "What did I write about the Lisbon trip?" searches.
- "Add the ferry booking to my Lisbon note" adds it to the end.
- "Put everything about Lisbon in a Travel folder" makes the folder and files the notes.
It can list, read, search, create, and edit notes, look through a note's history, and read a PDF or a picture attached to a note.
A long note is read a part at a time, so it can go straight to the chapter you asked about.
With Full permission it can also rename, archive, pin, and copy notes, put a note back to an earlier version, and organise your folders: make them, rename them, move them, and file notes in them.
Editing Asks First
Rewriting a note that already has words in it takes two steps.
The assistant first produces the change as a diff, and what gets written is exactly that diff, nothing more. It's told to show you the diff and let you decide.
It changes only the passages it means to. So even a very long note is never typed back out whole, with a mistake buried somewhere in the middle.
That's the mistake I'd worry about most when an AI edits a long document, and it's why the edit is a diff.
Adding to the end of a note, or starting a new one, skips the diff, since neither can lose anything. And putting a note back to an earlier version saves the note as it stood to its history first, so that can be undone too.
What It Can Never Do
It can't delete a note or put one in the Trash, whatever permission you give it.
There's no tool for it to call. That's always yours to do, in the app.
It gets to read your notes and add to them. It never gets to throw them away.
It can delete a folder only once the folder is empty.
Why? Deleting a full folder in the app asks first and offers Undo, and an assistant has neither. So it has to move things out first, one step you can see at a time, or ask you to do it.
And a locked note's title, contents, and hint are refused to it, whatever you picked.
You Choose How Much
Connecting shows you a screen with the app's name and what it's asking for, and that screen is the only thing that grants access.
There are three choices:
- Capture creates notes and nothing else. It can't read one back.
- Read can list, read, search, and look through history. It can't change anything.
- Full can read, search, create, edit, and organise notes and folders.
Side by side:
| Capture | Read | Full | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create a note | Yes | No | Yes |
| List, read, and search notes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Look through a note's history | No | Yes | Yes |
| Edit, rename, archive, pin, and copy notes | No | No | Yes |
| Organise folders | No | No | Yes |
| Delete a note or put it in the Trash | No | No | No |
That last row isn't a setting. It just isn't there.
Settings → Connected apps lists what you've approved and when each was last used. Disconnecting takes effect on the connector's next request.
Anything it already wrote stays in each note's history, under the name it connected as. And an approval lapses after 60 days without use, so an app you tried once and forgot about doesn't keep its access forever.
Connecting One
The address is https://app.scratchpad.sh/api/mcp.
In Claude, open Settings → Connectors, click Add custom connector, and give it that address. Click Connect, sign in to Scratchpad if you aren't already, pick what it may do, and click Approve.
You add it once, and it's there in the desktop app, on claude.ai, and on your phone.
In ChatGPT, Cursor, and the rest, wherever the app takes a custom MCP server, the address is all it needs.
The guide to connecting an assistant has the steps for each, and what to do if an app asks for a client ID. For a phone shortcut or a script, there's also a plain API, with tokens that take the same three permissions.
Still Your Notes
The assistant reads when you say so, and adds within the limits you set.
Throwing things away stays with you.