Use your snippets with AI agents (MCP)

How it works

Kudzu speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the standard way AI assistants use tools. Once you connect an assistant, it can look up the replies, signatures, and boilerplate you already keep in Kudzu, and save new ones when you ask.

Your assistant starts Kudzu’s MCP server, a small helper inside Kudzu.app.
The helper passes each request to Kudzu through a private connection on your Mac. Nothing goes through the internet.
Kudzu answers from your library and clipboard history, and hides anything that looks like a password or key first.

Agent access is off until you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time. While it’s off, connected assistants are told Kudzu is unavailable.

1. Turn it on

Open Kudzu and go to Settings → AI agents. Turn on Allow AI agents. Two more switches decide what assistants can do:

Create and edit snippets: assistants can add snippets and change existing ones. They can never delete anything.
Share clipboard history: assistants can search what you’ve copied, such as a link or an error message.

2. Connect Claude Code

Run this once in Terminal:

claude mcp add --scope user kudzu -- /Applications/Kudzu.app/Contents/MacOS/kudzu-desktop --mcp

Start a new Claude Code session and run /mcp. You should see kudzu connected. If Kudzu isn’t in your Applications folder, copy the command from Settings → AI agents instead, because it has the right path for your Mac.

3. Add the skill

The Kudzu skill teaches Claude when to reach for your snippets and how to write Kudzu templates, triggers, and groups. In Settings → AI agents, click Install skill. It goes in ~/.claude/skills/kudzu/SKILL.md. After a Kudzu update brings a new version, the button reads Update skill.

Other assistants can use it too. It ships inside the app at /Applications/Kudzu.app/Contents/Resources/skills/kudzu, so you can link that folder into another assistant’s skills folder. Connected assistants can also read it from Kudzu’s MCP server as kudzu://skill/SKILL.md.

Other apps

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and most other MCP apps take the same configuration. Add it to the app’s MCP settings. For Claude Desktop, that’s ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json. For Cursor, it’s ~/.cursor/mcp.json.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kudzu": {
      "command": "/Applications/Kudzu.app/Contents/MacOS/kudzu-desktop",
      "args": [
        "--mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Try it

Ask your assistant things like:

“Reply to this email with my standard pricing answer.”
“Save this paragraph as a snippet called Refund policy, triggered by ;refund.”
“Which of my snippets mention the old office address? Update them.”
“What was the link I copied from Slack this morning?”

What agents can do

Tool	What it does
`list_snippets`	Search your snippets by name, trigger, and content.
`get_snippet`	Read one snippet’s template, triggers, and fill-in fields.
`expand_snippet`	Get a snippet’s final text, with dates, nested snippets, and your fill-in values.
`list_groups`	See how your snippets are organized.
`create_snippet`	Add a snippet. Kudzu rejects triggers that are taken and creates missing groups.
`update_snippet`	Change a snippet’s name, triggers, content, group, or settings.
`list_clipboard`	Search what you copied recently, newest first.
`get_clipboard_item`	Read one clipboard item in full.

The last two appear only when you share clipboard history, and the write tools only when you allow editing. Changes an assistant makes save, sync, and back up like your own, and they show up in Kudzu right away.

Passwords and keys stay on your Mac

Before anything reaches an assistant, Kudzu checks it on your Mac. Text that looks like a password, API key, access token, or private key becomes [redacted: API key], or a similar note. A clipboard item that’s only a secret isn’t shared at all.

Assistants can’t find a secret by searching for it.
Assistants can’t change the text of a snippet that holds a secret, so a redacted copy never replaces the real one.
Kudzu recognizes keys from services like GitHub, OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Stripe, and Slack. It also catches labelled values such as password=…, passwords in links, and random-looking strings.

The same check protects your clipboard history in Kudzu. A secret shows as dots until you hover over it. Kudzu’s detection is a best guess, and you can correct it:

Choose Not a secret? on an item Kudzu hid by mistake. It shows normally, and assistants can read it.
Choose Hide as a secret in an item’s toolbar to hide something Kudzu missed. Assistants can’t see it.
Turn on Settings → Clipboard → Show secrets to stop hiding them in Kudzu. Assistants still don’t see them.

A short, plain password can look like an ordinary word. Keep passwords in a password manager. Kudzu never records what you copy from one.

Troubleshooting

“Kudzu isn’t running, or AI agent access is turned off”

Open Kudzu and check that Allow AI agents is on. Kudzu has to be running, and it usually is, in the menu bar.

The clipboard or editing tools are missing

Turn on Share clipboard history or Create and edit snippets, then start a new session in your assistant.

It stopped working after I moved Kudzu

The command includes Kudzu’s location. Remove the old server (claude mcp remove kudzu in Claude Code) and add it again with the command from Settings → AI agents.

Still stuck?

Open an issue on GitHub and we’ll take a look.