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Connect AI tools to Pastea

Pastea runs a small MCP server on your Mac so the AI tools you approve can search what you copied, read a clip in full, and put one back on your clipboard for you to paste. Everything stays on your Mac: the server listens only on your own machine, every tool is approved individually, and you can revoke any of them at any time. It is a Pastea Pro feature and is off until you turn it on in Settings → MCP & AI Tools.

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop installs Pastea as an extension — no config files.

  1. In Pastea, open Settings → MCP & AI Tools, turn on Enable MCP, and click Claude Desktop. Claude Desktop opens and offers to install the Pastea extension; click Install.
  2. Ask Claude something about your clipboard. The first time, Pastea shows "Allow Claude Desktop to use your clipboard history?" — click Allow. Claude's clipboard tools appear a moment later.
  3. That is all. The connection is listed under Connected AI Tools in the same Settings page.

You can also find Pastea in Claude Desktop under Settings → Extensions → Browse extensions, or download the extension file from the pastea-mcp releases and double-click it. Installed from the directory, the extension updates itself; installed from Pastea or a file, click Claude Desktop in Pastea again after a Pastea update to refresh it.

Claude Code

Click Claude Code in Settings → MCP & AI Tools, then run the command Pastea shows in Terminal. It looks like this, with your own token:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user pastea http://127.0.0.1:41417/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer pastea_mcp_…"

In Claude Code, /mcp confirms Pastea is connected.

Cursor and VS Code

Click Cursor or VS Code in Settings → MCP & AI Tools. The app opens and asks you to confirm installing the Pastea MCP server; that is the whole setup. If the one-click install cannot open the app, Pastea shows the config to paste instead.

Windsurf, Codex and other tools

Click the tool in Settings → MCP & AI Tools and Pastea shows exactly what to paste and where: ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json for Windsurf, ~/.codex/config.toml for Codex. For anything else, Custom Tool gives you the server URL and the Authorization header to use — Pastea speaks streamable HTTP, so any MCP client that can send a header can connect.

Things to try

  • "What did I copy in the last hour?"
  • "Find the API key I copied from Postman yesterday and put it back on my clipboard."
  • "Search my clipboard for the meeting link from Slack and open it."
  • "What does the screenshot I took this morning say?" — Pastea reads the text in your screenshots, and connected tools can search it.

What a connected tool can do

Four things, and nothing else:

  • Search your history and lists — text, links, file names, and text recognized inside screenshots.
  • Read one clip in full, with a thumbnail for pictures.
  • List your history and the lists you made.
  • Copy a clip back to the system clipboard, exactly as you copied it. You paste it yourself with ⌘ V; a tool never pastes into another app.

A connected tool can never delete a clip, and items Pastea conceals (from password managers) are never available to it. MCP access needs Pastea Pro: without it every tool gets a clear "Pastea Pro is required" answer and nothing else.

Revoking access

Every connected tool has its own access token. Open Settings → MCP & AI Tools, find it under Connected AI Tools, and click Revoke. Its next request fails immediately. For Claude Desktop, Pastea then asks you again only if you ask Claude to reconnect. Turning off Enable MCP stops the server for every tool at once.

Privacy

The MCP server listens only on 127.0.0.1 — your own Mac — and never on the network. Pastea sends nothing to us about what connected tools read. What a tool does with a clip it reads is governed by that tool's own privacy policy (for Claude, Anthropic's). The Claude Desktop extension stores the token Pastea issued in ~/Library/Application Support/Pastea/MCP Bridge/, readable by your user account only; revoking the connection invalidates it. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Troubleshooting

  • "Pastea isn't running, or its MCP endpoint is turned off." Open Pastea and turn on Enable MCP in Settings → MCP & AI Tools. Then ask Claude to call pastea_status.
  • "Pastea Pro is required." MCP access is a Pro feature. Subscribe in Pastea's Settings, then ask Claude to call pastea_status.
  • "Pastea is asking the user to allow this connection." Look for the Pastea window — it may be behind Claude — and click Allow.
  • Claude's clipboard tools vanished. The connection was revoked in Pastea, or Pastea was reset. Ask Claude to call pastea_status to pair again.
  • "Not connected" in Cursor, VS Code or Claude Code. The token in that tool's config was revoked. Click the tool in Pastea's Settings again to mint a new one.
  • Changed the port in Settings → MCP & AI Tools → Advanced…? Tools set up with a snippet keep the old URL; connect them again. The Claude Desktop extension reads the port from Pastea on every launch — restart Claude Desktop.

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