Automating Agenda

How To
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You can create powerful workflows by automating Agenda, which can be done both at a high level using Siri shortcuts or the Shortcuts app for example, or at low-level through x-callback-url support for example. The possibilities are endless!

Tip: We have created a dedicated area in the community to automating Agenda using Shortcuts where users share their worfklows and shortcuts, be sure to check it out.

App Shortcuts

Starting from Agenda 15, App Shortcuts are ways to quickly get one or more tasks done in Agenda through the Shortcuts app. By combining multiple Agenda Shortcuts, optionally with those from other apps you can create and automate your workflows. From the simple opening of a specific note from the Home Screen of your iPad, triggering a new note after a double-tap on the back of your phone, to complex workflows that grab all the things you need to do today from different apps and creates a new project in one tap.

Agenda for iOS also supports Siri shortcuts for common actions like opening a certain note, project or overview. Learn more about it here:

Search Notes in Shortcuts

You can use the Search Notes action in the Shortcuts app to find notes matching specific criteria. This is also available via x-callback-url. Search queries support action syntax like \color, \done, \pinned, and more, giving you the same power as in-app search from your automations.

Reference and Supported Shortcuts

Click here for a reference of the supported App Shortcuts…

Siri

You can use Siri to search your notes and interact with Agenda. For example, just ask Siri to search for something in Agenda, and you can preview the results directly. Siri also supports richer interchange of data between Agenda and other apps.

Control Center

On iOS, Agenda provides Control Center buttons that let you quickly jump to the Today or On the Agenda overviews without opening the app first. You can add these buttons in your device’s Control Center settings.

x-callback-url support

Agenda also supports for x-callback urls. These allow you to couple workflows between apps and/or automate certain actions within Agenda. It’s also supported by Apple’s Shortcuts app.

A quick intro to x-callback-urls:

  • The URL scheme is agenda or agenda-notes
  • Commands currently include on-the-agenda, today, open-project, etc. See the reference for a complete list.
  • For “open-project” and “open-note”, you can stipulate the target using a title parameter.
  • As usual, you can supply callback URLs via optional x-success and x-error parameters.

For example, to open Agenda to a note called “Meeting With Peta”, you could use this URL:
agenda://x-callback-url/open-note?title=Meeting%20With%20Peta

New in Agenda 23: the move-note action lets you move a note between projects from another app or shortcut:
agenda://x-callback-url/move-note?title=Meeting%20With%20Peta&project-title=Archive

Reference and Supported Actions

Click here for a reference of the supported x-callback-url actions…

MCP (Model Context Protocol) Integration

Agenda includes a built-in MCP server on macOS that allows AI assistants to interact with your notes, projects, and categories. MCP is an open protocol that tools like Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Codex use to communicate with apps.

Enabling the MCP Server

The MCP server is off by default. To enable it, go to the Agenda menu and choose Integrations > Enable MCP. The server runs locally on your Mac at http://127.0.0.1:16106/mcp and is only accessible from your own machine.

The Integrations menu also provides options to copy configuration commands for connecting various AI tools, as well as a Claude Desktop plugin that can be downloaded and installed directly.

Available Tools

The MCP server provides the following tools for AI assistants to use:

  • search_notes — Search your notes by text, tags, dates, and other criteria
  • get_note — Retrieve the full content of a specific note
  • list_projects — List all projects, optionally including archived ones
  • list_categories — List all categories
  • open_note — Open a specific note in Agenda
  • create_note — Create a new note in a project, with optional file attachments
  • append_to_note — Add content and/or file attachments to an existing note
  • edit_note — Modify the content of an existing note, with optional file attachments
  • create_project — Create a new project
  • create_category — Create a new category
  • move_note — Move an existing note to a different project (new in Agenda 23)

Connecting AI Tools

To connect an AI tool to Agenda’s MCP server, use the configuration command from the Integrations menu, or set it up manually:

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http agenda http://localhost:16106/mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor:
Use npx mcp-remote http://localhost:16106/mcp as the command in your MCP configuration. Alternatively, install the Claude Desktop plugin directly from the Integrations menu.

Codex:
Add the following to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.agenda]
url = "http://127.0.0.1:16106/mcp"

Attachments

The create_note, append_to_note, and edit_note tools support adding file attachments to notes. Attachments are sent as base64-encoded data, so an AI assistant can read a file from your Mac, encode it, and attach it to a note in one step. For example, you could ask your AI assistant to “attach this PDF to my Meeting Notes” and it will handle the rest.

Each attachment requires a filename (with extension, so Agenda knows the file type) and the base64-encoded file data. You can optionally control how the attachment is displayed using displayStyle (inline, thumbnail, thumbnail-with-details, or full-width) and displaySize (small, medium, or large).

Limits: up to 20 attachments per request, with a total maximum of 100 MB of file data.

Help Resources

The MCP server also exposes help resources covering common topics from the Agenda documentation, so AI assistants can look up how features work and provide better answers about Agenda.

What You Can Ask

Once your AI tool is connected, it can read and modify your notes on request. Some examples of what works well:

  • “Summarize my meeting notes from this week into a new note in the Weekly Reviews project.”
  • “Find anything tagged #followup that mentions Anna and list it.”
  • “Add the action items from this PDF to the bottom of my Project Kickoff note.” (the AI can attach files too)
  • “Move the ‘Q2 Planning’ note from Drafts into the Strategy project.”
  • “Create a new project called Holiday and seed it with a packing list.”

Because the MCP server runs locally on your Mac, your notes never leave your machine on the way to the AI tool — only the specific text the assistant reads or writes is sent through it.

Troubleshooting

If your AI tool can’t see Agenda:

  • Is MCP enabled? Check Agenda > Integrations > Enable MCP. The menu item flips to Disable MCP when the server is running.
  • Is Agenda running? The server lives inside the Agenda app — if Agenda quits, the server stops with it.
  • Did the AI tool reconnect after enabling MCP? Some clients cache the connection at launch. Restart the AI tool if it was running before you enabled MCP.
  • Port 16106 in use by something else? A quick test from Terminal: curl http://127.0.0.1:16106/mcp should return a response (not “connection refused”).

Note: The MCP server is only available on macOS.

1 Like
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Example use cases

7 Likes
Sharing, Import, Export, and Printing
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Any chance we’ll be able to share notes with others? Some collaborative features would be welcome (assign notes to other people, let other people edit your notes, dates, etc.).

Thanks!

8 Likes
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Nothing to announce, but this is certainly on the radar. It is something that would be good to have.

Thanks for the feedback.

3 Likes
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Being able to share and collaborate on notes is a must if I am going to be able to use this for work. I will probably pay for the app but won’t use it much until you add those features.

2 Likes
6

My husband and I are both Project Managers and we use Notes (Apple) for everything home and work. We have several notes that we share so that we can both update them in real time (i.e. grocer note, home improvement notes, etc) and both see the updates on our respective devices. I imported all my notes when i went premium but it doesnt look like i’m getting his updates now.

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We don’t have any sharing of data yet. Agenda doesn’t use the notes database: it is just an import, not a sync.

We do have ideas about collaboration down the track, but for now it is just a personal tool.

Thanks for the feedback!

1 Like
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I too am trying to share notes, calendar, projects, etc. with my boss. We can’ t quite figure it out. I want the Agenda app to work for us, but it doesn’t seem terribly intuitive? Does anyone have tips on sharing information via Agenda without emailing files back and forth?
Thanks,
Mary

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Unfortunately you can’t yet share notes by say inviting others to it within Agenda, we hope to bring such features in the future but for now the only way is through sharing Agenda files I’m afraid.

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I agree - collaboration with other users is a must

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Greatly looking forward to this feature. It would be highly useful!

Thx

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Hello! (MAC/ iOS) I noticed when one makes a reminder it creates a corresponding reminder and a shortcut in the Reminder app. It is pretty cool but the phone doesn’t automatically opens that shortcut when you tap on it. However, if the shortcut is in the URL field it does. Is it possible to make it so that when one creates a reminder, the shortcut falls into the URL field instead of in the Notes of the reminder?

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That’s a long story, see URL of note put in wrong reminder field - #2, good news is that there should be hope in macOS11 and iOS14, we’re looking if we can now finally make it work.

1 Like
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At least I need to involve my assistant. Being able to share Agenda with her would be great and helbful.