shyn — Claude Code MCP server: your Mac's memory on tap
A local memory layer for the Mac that records screen text, calls and notes, then lets your AI answer from your own history. Apple Silicon only.
Open on GitHubWhat shyn does
shyn watches what you see, hear and read — on-screen text, meetings, Chrome and Safari history, Apple Notes — and keeps it in an encrypted SQLite index on the machine itself, with the key in the macOS Keychain. Only the snippets tied to a question you asked ever leave the Mac.
Your assistant reaches that index through six MCP tools: search_memory, recent_activity, get_document, remember, forget and memory_status. Retrieval mixes keyword matching (FTS5/BM25) with on-device embeddings. A seventh tool, search_files, looks for your files by meaning, but it depends on the separate thatone app running on the same Mac; quit thatone and the tool drops out of the list within about 20 seconds.
This is pre-alpha software. Install runs through a Homebrew cask, the apps carry local signatures rather than Apple notarization, and shyn setup re-signs them in place — so expect breaking changes between versions. During beta the app also reports anonymous usage data, which you can decline on first run or switch off later in Settings.
What it helps with
- find the page where you read about a retention bug
- pull up yesterday's standup with speakers labelled
- recover text that flashed on screen days ago
- delete a memory entry for real, not a soft delete
- pause all capture for half an hour
Example prompts for the agent
- What did we decide in yesterday's standup?
- Search my memory for where I read about the retention bug
- Pause shyn for 30 minutes
How to install shyn
Install
The MCP registry has no launch command for it: see the repository README
Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to add an MCP server to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI and more
Questions about shyn
How do I install shyn in Claude Code?
It installs as a Mac app rather than a Claude plugin: brew install --cask shyn-labs/tap/shyn, then shyn setup. The second command starts the daemon and walks you through permissions from the menu bar window. Later updates: brew upgrade shyn && shyn setup.
What does shyn do?
It keeps a local index of what you have seen, heard and read, and exposes it to your assistant over MCP. Answers come from your own history instead of the web.
What do I need to run shyn?
A Mac with Apple Silicon running macOS. File search additionally needs the thatone app on the same machine, since shyn does not index files itself.
