BraveMCP

MIT License Version Local First MCP Compliant

BraveMCP is a local-first browser extension + MCP server that captures everything you browse — pages, bookmarks, highlights, notes — and makes it searchable by Claude Desktop as a personal "second brain."

Everything stays on your machine. No cloud. No tracking. Just your own memory, given to Claude.

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Demo

Claude answers a vague "do you remember…" question by searching your local browser memory — fully offline. A real screen-recorded GIF can replace this mockup; see docs/RECORDING.md.

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What It Does

Without BraveMCP	With BraveMCP
"I don't have access to your history"	Claude searches your browsing history directly
You copy-paste URLs manually	Extension auto-captures pages as you browse
Forgotten tabs lost forever	Time-decay search resurfaces what you forgot
Manual research summaries	Claude synthesizes your sessions automatically

Example

You: "Do you remember that article about MCP security I read last week?"

Claude: (calls find_forgotten_content) → "Yes — you visited MCP Security Guidelines 4 days ago, 3 times. It covers sandbox credential handling and shell injection prevention. Want a summary?"

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How It Works

Brave Browser
    ↓ (tab visits, bookmarks, highlights)
Extension (Manifest V3)
    ↓ POST /api/...
HTTP Bridge (Express :3747)
    ↓
MCP Server ←→ SQLite + ChromaDB
    ↓ stdio JSON-RPC
Claude Desktop

• Extension — Manifest V3. Auto-captures tab changes, bookmarks, and context-menu text highlights.
• HTTP Bridge — Express server on port 3747, runs inside the MCP server process to receive extension payloads.
• Storage — SQLite (FTS5 full-text search) + ChromaDB (local vector embeddings). Nothing leaves your machine.
• AI Pipeline — Ollama (llama3.2 / nomic-embed-text) for local summarization and embeddings, with Anthropic API as fallback.
• MCP Server — Exposes 16 tools to Claude Desktop over stdio.

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• Brave or Chrome browser
• Claude Desktop
• (Optional) Ollama for local AI — ollama pull llama3.2 && ollama pull nomic-embed-text
• (Optional) Python 3.10+ for ChromaDB vector search — pip install chromadb

Install

git clone https://github.com/glatinone/BraveMCP.git
cd BraveMCP
npm run setup

npm run setup handles everything: installs dependencies, builds TypeScript, and checks ports.

Connect to Claude Desktop

Add this to %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-memory": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/BraveMCP/mcp-server/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop.

Load the Browser Extension

1. Open brave://extensions (or chrome://extensions)
2. Enable Developer mode
3. Click Load unpacked → select the /extension folder

(Optional) Start ChromaDB for Semantic Search

pip install chromadb
chroma run --path ./storage/chroma

ChromaDB runs at http://localhost:8000. Without it, BraveMCP falls back to SQLite keyword search — still works great.

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Available MCP Tools

Once connected, Claude can call any of these 16 tools:

Tool	What it does
get_open_tabs	Get your currently open browser tabs
get_active_tab	Get the tab you're looking at right now
get_bookmarks	Retrieve your saved bookmarks
search_memory	Keyword + semantic search across your history
find_related_content	Find pages related to a search query
find_forgotten_content	Resurface old content using time-decay + visit scoring
capture_current_page	Save the active page's content to memory
save_note	Save a freeform note
save_bookmark	Save a bookmark with a folder
summarize_open_tabs	Synthesize what you're currently researching
summarize_research_topic	Deep-dive summary on a specific topic from your history
get_research_sessions	Auto-clustered browsing sessions by domain/topic
generate_weekly_digest	Weekly summary of your browsing and research gaps
suggest_tab_cleanup	Recommends tabs to close, archive, or keep
get_all_open_tabs	Get the live, id-tagged array of every open tab — call first when organizing tabs
apply_tab_grouping	Apply semantic tab groups to the browser, validated by a critic engine (min score 90/100) before staging

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Page Capture Flow

The extension auto-syncs tab visits in the background. For full page content (text body + AI summary), click "Capture Content" in the extension popup. This sends the page body to the MCP server, which stores it in SQLite and generates an AI summary and vector embedding.

Claude can also save a page directly: capture_current_page(url, title, content, summary).

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Security

The HTTP bridge listens on localhost:3747 for the extension only — but a plain localhost server is reachable by any browser tab's JavaScript, not just the extension. The bridge enforces an Origin allowlist so that only the extension itself (chrome-extension://… / moz-extension://…) or a same-machine, non-browser client (no Origin header, e.g. a CLI script) can call it. An ordinary website has no way to spoof its Origin header, so it cannot reach /api/capture, /api/note, /api/stage-groups, etc. — closing off a memory-poisoning path where a malicious page could otherwise plant content into the local database that Claude later treats as trusted research. See mcp-server/src/security/origin.ts.

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Project Structure

BraveMCP/
├── extension/              # Manifest V3 browser extension
│   ├── background.js       # Service worker: tab sync, bookmarks
│   ├── content.js          # DOM extraction for page capture
│   ├── manifest.json
│   └── popup/              # Extension UI
├── mcp-server/             # Node.js MCP server
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── index.ts        # MCP tools + Express HTTP bridge
│   │   ├── storage/
│   │   │   ├── database.ts # SQLite schema, FTS5, migrations
│   │   │   └── chroma.ts   # ChromaDB client
│   │   └── ai/
│   │       └── pipeline.ts # Embeddings + summarization pipeline
│   └── tsconfig.json
├── scripts/
│   └── setup.js            # One-command setup script
├── storage/                # SQLite DB lives here (git-ignored)
└── package.json            # Root: runs setup script

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Roadmap

• Phase 1 — MCP server scaffold
• Phase 2 — SQLite storage layer (FTS5, migrations)
• Phase 3 — Browser extension (Manifest V3)
• Phase 4 — Vector search + AI pipeline (Ollama / Anthropic fallback)
• Phase 5 — Advanced tools (digest, sessions, forgotten content, tab cleanup)
• Phase 6 — Polish + public release

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT — built by Yehezkiel Tampubolon