Claude

OpenKnowledge works with Claude Code through MCP plus an installed skill that teaches the agent how to use the tools. Both surfaces are supported:

Claude Code CLI — the claude command in your terminal.
Claude Desktop app — Claude Code in the Code tab.

Claude Desktop's regular chat can use the tools too — see Claude Desktop chat.

Install

There are two ways to connect Claude Code, depending on how you run OpenKnowledge:

macOS desktop app. The first time you open a project, a consent dialog detects Claude Code and configures it for you. To re-trigger the dialog, choose File → Set up OpenKnowledge integrations….
Web app / terminal (Linux, Windows, Intel Mac — see the web app guide). Run ok init in your project: it registers the OpenKnowledge MCP server with Claude Code and the other editors it detects. Every ok start repairs the entry if it has drifted (it never adds one you removed).

From the editor, Open with AI ▸ Claude dispatches the current file, folder, or project to Claude Code in one click. Two entry points: the sidebar's right-click menu (file / folder / empty space) and the macOS File → Open with AI menu. You can also hand the current doc to Claude from the bottom Ask AI composer.

Claude Code receives a short prompt asking it to open the target in OpenKnowledge's web preview, then grounds the rest of the conversation through MCP. See Editor → Open with AI for the full UX.

Verify

Open the project in Claude Code and ask:

Claude Code should call the OpenKnowledge exec tool and respond with some of your documents.

If Claude Code doesn't use the OpenKnowledge exec tool, restart it so it picks up the new MCP entry. If it's still missing and ok init reported your config was left unchanged, OpenKnowledge couldn't edit ~/.claude.json safely and left it untouched — the summary names the reason in parentheses; fix the config and re-run ok init.

Live editing

When Claude Code writes to a doc, you'll see the change land live in OpenKnowledge. Just ask Claude Code to open it for you.

Scheduled runs

Claude Code can work your knowledge base on a schedule (a nightly consolidation pass, a morning meeting sync) without OpenKnowledge shipping a scheduler of its own. Three tiers, as of August 2026. Anthropic's scheduler surfaces are moving quickly, so check the linked docs before you rely on a specific limit:

Desktop scheduled tasks. Claude Desktop's Routines page schedules local runs (choose Local when creating one) down to the minute. They see your local files and MCP servers, so an OK project works as-is. Tasks fire only while the app is open and your computer is awake.
Cloud routines (/schedule). These run on Anthropic's infrastructure against a fresh clone of a GitHub repo and see only what is committed: no local files, no locally-registered MCP servers. Reaching OK from a routine takes both halves, a committed .mcp.json declaring open-knowledge and a setup script in the routine's environment that installs the CLI. If you ran ok init --local-only or unshared later, .mcp.json sits in .git/info/exclude and never reaches the clone, so this tier needs the default shared posture. Minimum schedule interval is one hour.
OS cron + claude -p. A plain cron job running claude -p "<prompt>" in the project loads the committed skill, .mcp.json, and CLAUDE.md the same way an interactive session does. That depends on -p staying non-bare: --bare skips MCP server discovery, and Anthropic has said it will become the default for -p in a future release. Pass --mcp-config .mcp.json explicitly if you want the job to survive that change.

See Ingest meetings for a worked example.

Claude Desktop chat

ok init and the consent dialog also register the MCP server with Claude Desktop when it's installed — user-level, in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows. Claude Desktop picks up the entry only after you quit and relaunch it.

After relaunching, ask in any chat:

Claude Desktop should call the OpenKnowledge exec tool and respond with some of your documents.