Caute

Connecting an assistant

Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and any other assistant that takes an MCP server can search your library, ask it questions and save to it, in the spaces you choose. Each one signs in to Caute as you. Nothing is copied between them but one address.

The address

Every assistant is given the same address. Find it, with a Copy address button, on Connect an assistant, in Settings under Connections. The same page has the steps for each assistant, kept up to date.

Connecting Claude

On the web, the desktop app and the phone:

  1. Open Claude's settings, then Connectors, and choose Add custom connector.
  2. Name it Caute and paste the address.
  3. Under the OAuth client, keep Use Claude's published identity. Caute recognises Claude by it and shows a Claude badge on the connection.
  4. Add it, then sign in to Caute when Claude asks, and choose the spaces it may see.

Connecting ChatGPT

  1. Open ChatGPT's Plugins page and choose Add custom MCP server.
  2. Name it Caute and paste the address. Leave authentication on OAuth.
  3. Read ChatGPT's warning about custom servers, then create it.
  4. Sign in to Caute when ChatGPT asks, and choose the spaces it may see.

Which ChatGPT plans may add a custom server, and whether it may save, is ChatGPT's rule, not Caute's.

Gemini and other assistants

An app that adds a remote server by its address and signs in, Gemini's connected apps among them, takes the same address and goes through the same sign-in. The steps for others are on the developer site.

What you agree to

When an assistant connects, Caute shows a screen that names the app and what it is asking to do, such as "Search your items", "Save items to your Caute" or "Create notes and add to existing ones". Below that you tick the spaces it may use, under Only in these spaces. Nothing outside those spaces is visible to it. Then choose Allow or Deny. If an app asks both to read and to write, the screen warns you: a web page with hidden instructions could trick it into misusing that access, so give it only the spaces it needs.

A space kept away from AI is never visible to any assistant, even if you tick it here (see Privacy and your data). In a team, an owner or admin can also block an app from the team's spaces.

What an assistant can do

  • Search and ask. It finds cards by their words or meaning, and can ask your library a question and get a short answer that cites the cards it came from.
  • Gather context. At the start of a task it can ask Caute for the best passages for that task, short and cited, with your own highlights first and, if it asks, what your assistants remember about you. Everything it is given is labelled as quoted material, not instructions, so a saved page can't tell it what to do.
  • Save. It can save a page, a file or the conversation when you ask. When it reads web pages for you while doing a task, it can save the ones it cited. Those are marked Read for you by the assistant's name in your timeline, and the card says what it was asked. Each connection may save 50 cards a day; saving from Caute's own apps is never counted against that.
  • Write notes and memories. It can create notes and add to them. It changes an existing note only if you allowed that. What it remembers about you goes to Memory.
  • Suggest. Tags, links and details for a card (a date, an amount, an author) arrive as suggestions, labelled with the app that made them, unless you allowed it to apply them without asking you first. They wait on the card until you keep or dismiss them, and change no filter or export before then.

Cards inside the chat

In an assistant that shows them, such as Claude, a result from Caute can appear as a card in the conversation: the passage it found, your highlights on it, and any suggestions waiting, with Keep and Dismiss. Select words to Highlight them, or keep the pages a saved conversation cited, without leaving the chat. Open in Caute takes you to the card. Each tap is made through the same connection, so the card can do nothing the assistant couldn't.

Seeing what each assistant did

Apps and tokens lists every connected app with the spaces it may see, when it was connected and when it was last used. For each one it shows:

  • what it did in the last 30 days: saves, searches, questions, notes and cards read
  • how often it was given context, and when last, or "never asked for context". Whether an assistant asks at the start of a task is up to it. One that never asks can be told to, in its own instructions or at the start of a conversation: "ask Caute for context first".
  • Cards read, the cards it opened in the last 30 days, and Activity, its recent requests

A card also shows which assistants read it, under Read by on its Info tab.

Disconnecting

Choose Disconnect beside the app in Apps and tokens. It loses access right away. If it wrote memories about you, Caute asks what to do with them: Disconnect and keep them leaves them as your notes, and Disconnect and forget them erases them.

If an assistant says Caute has no such tool after Caute gains a new one, restart the assistant's app, or refresh the connection, or remove it and add it again.

Tokens for your own scripts

For a script, or an app that can only start a program on your computer, make a personal token under Tokens in Apps and tokens: choose New token, name it, pick where it saves and what it can do. The token is shown once. Most only need to save. The details are on the developer site.