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Hello there. My name is Greg and today I
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want to talk to you about how you can
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use Claude Desktop plus MCP servers plus
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Obsidian to get some pretty astonishing
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results with not very much effort. Let's
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start with some definitions. What is
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Claude Desktop? Claude Desktop is the
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app version of Claude. You can install
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it on your machine and run it as an app
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versus the web version. Why would you
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want to do that? Why don't you just use
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the web version? Well, in our case,
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primarily because the uh desktop version
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of Claude can act as an MCP client,
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which means that it can interact with
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MCP servers, and you cannot do this yet
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uh via the web version. So, what is an
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MCP server? Uh MCP or model context
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protocol is an open protocol that was
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developed by anthropic and it is a
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standardized way to bring context to
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your models. Uh this context will often
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take the form of knowledge say
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interacting with a database or tools
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which would be functions programmatic
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functions that your model can decide to
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invoke. Uh and one of the simplest uh
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MCP servers was the file system one. And
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so the file system one equips your model
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with a set of tools that will allow it
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to list all the files in a directory,
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read those files, write to those files,
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create new files, etc. This pairs really
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nicely with Obsidian. Obsidian is an
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incredibly popular note-taking app. And
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Obsidian uh basically sits on top of
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what it calls a vault. A vault is
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effectively a directory full of markdown
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files. Uh and so if you take the cloud
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desktop app, you give it access to the
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file system via an MCP server, it can
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now read and edit your Obsidian notes.
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Let's look at an example of what you can
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do with this setup. Last week I spoke at
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the business of software conference in
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the UK and gave a talk about AI and
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afterwards my friend Dave Collins from
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the conference asked if I would do uh an
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interview over email for his blog and
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newsletter and I said sure and he sent
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me a list of 10 questions to sort of
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answer at my leisure uh that were
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related to my talk. Um these 10
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questions is the sort of thing that I
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would naturally procrastinate. Uh, so I
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instead just said, "Hey, I wonder if I
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can use this new setup to knock this out
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in an hour or two." Uh, so what I did is
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I created a new Obsidian note and I copy
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and pasted Dave's questions into there.
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Then I went into Claude and I asked,
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"Hey, do you have access to this note?"
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And I said, "Yes, indeed, I can see the
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note." And I said, "Okay, ask me each
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question one at a time." And so now it
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was like I was being interviewed by
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Claude as opposed to being faced with
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all the questions at once. Now, instead
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of typing my responses into the chat
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box, I used Super Whisper to dictate my
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responses. And this was nice because I
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could ramble a little bit, but I wasn't
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getting caught in the typical writing
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trap of editing while I was writing. I
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just spoke my reply and then after each
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reply, I asked Claude to update the
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original document with my response to
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the question. And it did this pretty
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much flawlessly. I did have some issues
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with Super Whisper. uh it was a little
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bit finicky and I had to turn on the uh
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simulate key press uh for it to input
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the text into the clawed text box. And
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I'm not sure what was going on there,
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but it took a little bit of uh of poking
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and proddding, but I was able to get
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Super Whisper to work here. So, after
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that pass, it went through and it asked
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me the 10 questions and now I had
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responses. I then asked Claude to take a
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pass over all of my responses and to
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just clean them up. So, I said, "Hey,
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I'm likely to repeat myself when I
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speak. Uh, can you please uh edit these
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for brevity and succinctness? Make sure
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I'm only expressing an idea once per
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response, but please keep everything as
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close to my words as possible. Uh, I
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also asked it to please uh put its edits
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into a new document. I was afraid here
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that if something went wrong, I would
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lose all my original responses and it
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wouldn't be impossible to retrieve them,
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but it would be tricky." Uh, this did
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though make me think of a bit of a
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tangent for a future experiment. I do
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wonder if you could uh equip Claude with
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the Git MCP server, uh, which would
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allow it then to make commits. And I'd
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have to look into this, but I imagine
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that Git plus Obsidian, it would be a
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pretty powerful combination to have
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version control for all of your notes.
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Marking that for a future project. Uh,
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it was able to create a new file, no
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problem. Uh, it cleaned up my responses.
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uh did a pretty good job. Uh still
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wasn't exactly where I wanted it. So now
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I went into Obsidian and I finally, you
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know, sort of for the first time took
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the keys and did a good old-fashioned
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editing pass, uh and cleaned up the
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text, um you know, removed the bits that
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I didn't like, added some bits that I
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thought of afterwards. Um, but this
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editing process is so much easier than
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writing. And saving the editing for
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after I've already done the writing and
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already had Claude take a first pass and
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clean up my dictations saved me so much
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time. Uh, in the end, I ended up writing
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about 2,000 words uh, and probably about
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90 minutes uh, and sent these off to
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Dave that morning before lunchtime. And
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it felt great. Like it felt great to
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knock out this project. And I can easily
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say that I would not have gotten this
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done as quickly if it had not been for
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this Claude plus MCP server plus
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Obsidian setup.