AI has become a genuinely useful part of how a lot of people work, and we’ve spent a good while thinking about what that means for Bear. We didn’t want to bolt something on, hand your notes to a third party. Instead, we built something that gets out of the way and lets you decide what connects to Bear and how.
Today we’re introducing BearCLI with Claude Connector and MCP server to open a whole new world for developers, power users, and anyone who wants to connect Bear to the tools they already use.
Bear CLI
BearCLI is a command-line tool bundled directly inside Bear. It lets you read, search, create, and edit notes from outside the app from a terminal, a script, or any tool that can run a shell command. Run bearcli -h to see everything it can do. For full installation instructions, see the support page.
Claude Connector
For Claude users, this is the most direct way to put your notes to work. Install it from Bear’s top menu Help → Advanced → Install Claude Connector, and Bear handles the rest. After that, you can open Claude and have a real conversation with your notes: ask questions, make changes, or create new ones, all in natural language. It’s built on BearCLI under the hood, so everything that works in the CLI works here too.
Once you set up, the kinds of things you can ask become surprisingly useful, and occasionally a little philosophical:
- “Find all notes tagged
#todothat haven’t been edited in over 30 days” - “List all notes I created this week, sorted by last modified”
- “Find all empty notes and move them to the trash”
- “Based on everything in my notes, what kind of person do you think I am?”
That last one is our favorite.
MCP Server
The MCP Server is for tools that speak the MCP protocol like Claude Code or certain IDEs. If you’re building workflows or working in an environment that supports MCP, bearcli mcp-server gives those tools direct access to your Bear notes with no extra setup. You can read here for more information about MCP Server and how to use it.
Your notes, your tools
When we chose Markdown as Bear’s foundation, the reason wasn’t just technical. It was because an open format means your notes aren’t locked to any single app or use case. Your notes stay yours, whatever happens. We think about the CLI the same way. It’s a general-purpose tool that doesn’t know or care what’s on the other end. Nothing connects to your notes unless you set it up, and no notes are shared with any tool until you choose to. This just gives you more ways to use it.
Try it now!
Update Bear now on macOS to try it out. Kind reminder: It’s always a good idea to make a backup before you start anything adventurous. For the full setup guide and command reference, see the support page.
Comment below to tell us what you build with BearCLI, we’d love to know!
Happy writing!
