Title: MCP server returns 22 categories; only 5 exist in the app

Feedback
1

Agenda 23.2 (Setapp), macOS, MCP server enabled via Agenda → Integrations → Enable MCP, connected to Claude for Mac through the Claude Desktop plugin.

What I see:

The agenda_list_categories MCP tool returns 22 categories. My sidebar, fully expanded, shows 5.

The other 17 don’t appear anywhere in the app. They’re all names of categories I used to have. I’ve been cleaning up my library — deleting projects and categories, archiving others, and emptying the trash. The category records appear to have survived that.

How it was tested:

Working with Claude over the MCP connection, Claude created a project called ZZTEST via agenda_create_project, with categoryId set to the UUID the API reports for one of the 17 invisible categories. The call succeeded.

agenda_list_projects filtered to that categoryId returns ZZTEST, with categoryTitle set to that category’s name. So the assignment was accepted and stored.

In the app, ZZTEST appears under “Other Projects” — the uncategorized section. The category itself never appears in the sidebar.

I quit Agenda and relaunched. agenda_list_categories returns the same 22 with the same UUIDs, and the category still doesn’t render.

What I’d expect:

Either the app should show these categories so I can delete them, or the MCP server shouldn’t return category records the app treats as nonexistent. As it stands there’s no way to clean them up — the connector has no delete tool for categories, and there’s nothing in the sidebar to right-click.

It’s harmless in daily use, since they hold nothing and don’t affect search. But anything reading my library through MCP gets a misleading picture of the structure, and assigning a project to one of them silently produces an uncategorized project.

Happy to send the specific names and UUIDs privately if that would help you reproduce it.

2

Thanks for reporting it.

Sounds like it is not properly handling deleted categories. We will fix this ASAP.

Kind regards,
Drew

4

Thanks again for reporting this. We have a fix in place now, and it will be in the next release.

Kind regards,
Drew

5

Thank You, Drew,

That was a fast turnaround.

It is good to know it’ll be sorted in the next release.

Thank you both for all that you do.

‘…the slimmest of instructions, “To use your gifts and dreams for good.” ’
— From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

6

Related to the above — the cleanup that turned up those stale categories left me with questions.

To work out what I actually had, I kept expanding every category in the sidebar and then collapsing them again, and I never managed to see the whole thing at once. Is there a view I’m missing that shows the entire structure — categories, subcategories, the projects inside them, and ideally the note titles too — as a single outline or flat list? Something searchable, so I could filter it down rather than scroll. I looked and couldn’t find one. If it isn’t there, I’d love to see one.

And one small thing in the same area: agenda_list_categories returns a flat list with no parent, so nesting is invisible over MCP too. If it reported the parent category, I (w/ Claude’s help :wink: could put together my own overview.

Thanks again…

7

Thanks Dan, and glad the category fix landed quickly.

On the MCP side you are right, and it is a fair thing to ask for. agenda_list_categories only gives you an id and a title back. So you can nest a category and then have no way to read the nesting back out. We will add the parent to what that tool returns, which should be enough for you to build the overview you have in mind.

Kind regards,

Drew

9

Thanks again, Drew,

I just updated to 23.3; glad to see you folks are ready for the OS 27s.

I’m guessing the fix is landing in the next release rather than this one as agenda_list_categories still returns the deleted ones.

Separately, is there any way to see a list of my categories inside the app, other than the sidebar tree, somewhere we could see them all at once. It would be great to be able to see an outline of my structure to the depth of Note titles.

10

Thanks Dan.

On the deleted categories, I can confirm the fix is not in 23.3. It is in our development build and will go out in the release after this one, so what you are seeing is expected for now.

On seeing your whole structure at once, there is nothing in the app that does that today. The sidebar tree is the only place categories are shown, and it only expands one item at a time, so you are not missing a hidden view. It is a fair ask and I have put it on our list.

Drew