Point an assistant at your library: one command, what works without permission, and the single switch that lets it act.
Aspects ships a Model Context Protocol server inside the app. Point an assistant at it and it can read your library, find an export you made last week and start a render — without you leaving the terminal.
What you need
Aspects for macOS, and a client that speaks MCP. Claude Code is the one this guide uses; Claude Desktop and any other MCP client work the same way.
Connect Claude Code
The server lives inside the app bundle, so there is nothing extra to download. Run this once:
claude mcp add aspects -- /Applications/Aspects.app/Contents/Helpers/aspects-mcp
If you keep Aspects somewhere other than /Applications, open Settings ▸ Assistants in the app — it shows the exact command for your install with a Copy button.
What works straight away
Reading needs no permission at all, and it works with Aspects closed. Ask what you made this week, ask for the note about a client, ask where a particular export went. The server reads the library's files directly.
Turning on the parts that act
Opening a document, starting an export, and creating or editing one are behind a single switch: Settings ▸ Assistants ▸ "Let assistants act on this library". It is off by default, and it only works while Aspects is open.
With it on, an assistant presses the same button the panel presses. A render it starts is the render you would have made, in the same folder with the same filename pattern. The server never writes your library itself — it asks the running app to do it.
What it will not do
Nothing deletes. There is no tool that removes a document, an export or a file, so the worst case is a document you did not want. Nothing leaves your Mac either: the app and the server talk over a loopback socket with a token that changes every launch.
One thing worth knowing
A note is handed over as its full text. That is the most useful thing the library can offer an assistant, and it is also the reason to think about which assistant you connect.