Granola MCP: Connect Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor (2026)

Granola is the AI notepad for meetings. It listens through your own computer, with no bot in the call, and turns the conversation into notes you can search later. MCP is the open standard that lets an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT call another product’s tools directly.

Granola runs its own MCP server, announced on February 4, 2026. Connect it once and Claude can answer “what did I promise in Tuesday’s call?” from your real notes. On the free plan it reads your own notes from the last 30 days, with no transcripts.

Setup is the easy part. The harder question is what to let the AI read, and Granola’s own docs and Claude Code’s limits point the same way. Hand it your notes, and keep the transcripts for the rare moment you need someone’s exact words.

What Granola’s MCP server can reach

Granola lists nine tools on its MCP help page. Six touch your meetings, and three manage the connection by checking the signed-in account, switching workspace and signing out. If the protocol is new to you, our plain explanation of MCP covers it without the jargon.

Granola also says some search is limited on Basic, without naming a tool. What each plan can reach is set out on its pricing page, read on October 15, 2026.

Business is billed monthly, and annual billing is for Enterprise contracts. The pricing page still marks MCP access as beta. Four more things decide what you see.

• One workspace at a time: the server reads whichever workspace is active in the Granola app. A personal and a work workspace never mix in one answer.
• Shared notes count: notes shared directly with you, and private folders shared with you, count as your own. Team space notes need Business or above.
• A person, not a script: each connection is one person signing in with OAuth. There’s no API key or service account for MCP. Scripts use the separate Granola API, which starts at Business.
• Rate limit: Granola puts it at around 100 requests a minute, averaged across tools, and says it may change.

How to connect Granola to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor

Every route below ends in a browser sign-in to Granola. Use the email your Granola account is registered under. A different email gets you an Unauthorized error or an empty list of notes.

Claude, on the web or desktop

Granola is in Claude’s connector directory, marked Anthropic verified and listed since January 2026. Open Customize, then Connectors, click +, search for Granola and click Connect. Anthropic says directory connectors are available to all Claude users, though Granola’s own posts say a paid Claude plan is needed, so check if you’re on Free. Then switch it on in a chat from the + menu, under Connectors.

On Team and Enterprise, an owner adds Granola under Organization settings, then Connectors, first. Each person still signs in with their own Granola account.

ChatGPT

Open Settings, search for Granola and connect. Then mention @Granola in a chat, or just ask about your meetings. OpenAI says app availability varies by plan and region, and in Enterprise and Edu workspaces an admin controls which apps are on.

Claude Code

claude mcp add granola --transport http https://mcp.granola.ai/mcp

Open a new session, run /mcp, pick granola and choose Authenticate. Our list of which AI apps support MCP covers the other clients.

Cursor, Codex and the rest

Any client that handles remote MCP servers with OAuth can use the same URL. In Cursor, add this to ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Cursor supports OAuth for servers that need it.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "granola": {
      "url": "https://mcp.granola.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

In Codex, add a [mcp_servers.granola] table with the same url to config.toml, then run codex mcp login granola.

First prompt

Which Granola account am I signed in with?

It returns the email and the active workspace. If either is wrong, every answer after it will be too.

When it won’t connect

• “No tools available” in Claude: go to Claude’s connector settings on claude.ai, even if you use the desktop app. Select Granola, choose Disconnect, then Connect again without refreshing the page.
• “Unauthorized: user has not created a Granola account yet”: you signed in with a different email from the one your Granola account uses.
• No notes found: you’re in the wrong workspace. Switch it in the Granola app, or ask the AI to switch it.

Sometimes it isn’t you. On March 9, 2026, claude.ai users couldn’t connect to Granola, and Granola’s incident report shows a fix going in about 18 hours later. On October 8, Claude Code couldn’t connect for about an hour.

Give Claude your notes, not your transcripts

Business adds transcripts to what MCP can read. For most of what you’ll ask, don’t use them.

That isn’t only our view. On its MCP page, Granola says its notes are “a better feed for an agent than a raw transcript, and a cheaper one.” Its docs agree, pairing get_meetings with action items and get_meeting_transcript with exact quotes.

• Everyone else is “Them”: without speaker tags, a desktop transcript labels your microphone “Me” and everyone else “Them”. Tags work for Google Meet, Zoom and Teams on Mac and Windows once set up. Granola’s note writer usually works out names from context, and a raw transcript hands that guess to your AI.
• They’re big: in August 2026 Granola added a paged transcript endpoint to its API, plus a TRANSCRIPT_TOO_LARGE error for transcripts too big to send in one go. Claude Code warns when one tool result passes 10,000 tokens, and moves any text result over 50,000 characters into a file unless the server raises that limit.
• They’re the sensitive layer: Granola gives Enterprise admins a Meeting transcripts switch that blocks AI tools from transcripts while notes and summaries stay available. You can also set transcripts to auto-delete after anything from a day to a year, and the notes stay.

So pull a transcript for one job. You need someone’s exact words from one named meeting, or the notes look wrong and you want to check.

That makes the upgrade question simple. If you pay for Business, pay for the history. Basic’s 30-day window will limit you far more than the missing transcripts.

Where your notes go when an AI reads them

When Claude calls a Granola tool, whatever comes back becomes part of your Claude chat. Access is tied to your own login, so a colleague in the same Claude workspace can’t read your notes through it.

Granola says OpenAI and Anthropic are never allowed to train on your data, under its enterprise agreements. That promise is about the AI companies Granola itself pays. It can’t change the terms of your own Claude or ChatGPT account.

Those terms differ by plan. Anthropic trains on Free, Pro and Max chats when the training setting is on, and keeps that data for five years, against 30 days with it off. Team, Enterprise and API accounts sit under Anthropic’s commercial terms, which that training choice doesn’t touch.

ChatGPT’s switch is called Improve the model for everyone, under Settings, then Data controls. OpenAI says Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces aren’t used for training by default. Claude Code also keeps session transcripts in plaintext under ~/.claude/projects/ for 30 days by default, so a transcript you pull there sits on your disk.

Check that setting before you connect a work Granola to a personal AI account. And remember a transcript holds other people’s exact words. Granola puts no bot in the call, so unless you use its setting to let people know, they may not know it was listening. Our guide to vetting an MCP server covers the rest of that check.

Prompts that work on meeting notes

Each of these reads notes first and opens a transcript only if it must. They work on Basic too, as long as the meetings fall in the last 30 days.

One habit helps. Granola describes its query tool as “Chat with Granola”, so Claude gets back an answer Granola’s own chat already wrote. For anything you’ll act on, ask Claude to open the notes with get_meetings.

This week’s action items

Use Granola. List my meetings from Monday to today.
Open the notes for each one. Do not open transcripts.
Give me every action item as a table with owner, task,
due date if one was said, and meeting title. Put the
items assigned to me first.

Prep for a call

Ask me who my next call is with. Then find my last two
Granola meetings with that person and read the notes.
Give me one screen with what we agreed, what I owe
them, what they owe me, and one open question to
raise. Quote a transcript only if the notes are unclear.

Decision log

Read my Granola notes from the last 30 days. List every
decision as a row with date, meeting, the decision, who
made it, and any later meeting that changed it. Mark a
row "unclear" if the notes do not say who decided.

Weekly digest

Write my weekly digest from my Granola notes for the
last 7 days. Three parts: decisions, risks, and
follow-ups I have not sent. Keep it under 250 words
and name the meeting each point came from.

For a long date range, ask for the meeting list first, then pick which notes to open.

Unofficial servers and other meeting apps

Skip the unofficial servers

Before Granola shipped its own server, people wired it into Claude with community servers that read the desktop app’s local cache file. Some still collect stars. proofsh/granola-mcp-server had 94 on October 15, 2026.

They break when Granola changes that file. That server’s issue tracker has two such reports, opened on February 26 and March 4, 2026, both after Granola changed its cache format. Another, varadhjain/granola-claude-plugin, was deprecated in April 2026 with a note pointing users to the official server.

There’s a quieter risk. When a transcript is missing from the cache, the proofsh server reads the login token the Granola app keeps on your disk and calls an undocumented Granola endpoint with it. Use the official server.

Other meeting apps with MCP

If you’re still choosing a notes app, here’s where the main ones stand. Each line was checked at the vendor’s own site on October 15, 2026.

Eleven of the other twelve run an official server that reads meeting data. Microsoft’s reaches meetings, but the Microsoft docs we read never say it returns Teams transcripts or recaps.

So MCP support alone won’t separate these apps. The plan it sits on will, because Fathom, Read AI and Circleback include it free while Krisp, Jamie and Bluedot charge for it.

tl;dv’s pricing page showed us euros, and Jamie’s US price comes from its billing docs. If your notes already live in Notion, our Notion MCP guide covers its server.

Where ContextBolt fits

ContextBolt is ours, so weigh the bias. Granola holds what was said in the meeting. It doesn’t hold the article a customer sent you afterward, or the Reddit thread you saved about their market.

ContextBolt is a Chrome extension. It saves any web page with its text in one click, and it captures your X, Reddit and LinkedIn saves into the same library. Every save is tagged and grouped into topics automatically, like folders.

Pro adds an MCP endpoint, signed in with OAuth, so Claude can search the whole library by meaning in the same chat that reads your Granola notes. When it opens a saved web page, it gets the first 2,000 characters. It only knows what you chose to save, and it doesn’t monitor mentions for you.

Try this on Pro

Ask me which customer or topic to look at. Pull my
Granola notes about it from the last 30 days. Then
search my ContextBolt bookmarks for pages and posts I
saved about it. Tell me what the saved pieces raise
that never came up in a meeting, with a link to each.

Basic is free up to 150 bookmarks. Pro is $6 a month and removes the cap, adds cloud sync and the MCP endpoint. In Claude, add it under Customize, then Connectors, then +, then Add custom connector.

Your meetings on a live board

Asking Claude is one way to use your notes. Seeing them is another. Context Board, our live dashboard, signs in to Granola’s own MCP server and puts your latest meetings on a widget.

Claude, Codex or any app connected to your board can build that widget from a sentence. Your calendar’s next events can sit beside it. If Claude has Granola connected too, it can add each call’s action items to the board’s to-do list.

The board only runs Granola’s tools that read, so your notes stay as Granola keeps them. Only you see the board until you turn on sharing, and then anyone with the link sees the notes too.

Context Board is free for 3 days, then $6 a month.

Worth connecting?

Yes, on any Granola plan. It’s a sign-in, none of its documented tools edits a note, and Basic lets you test it on a month of real meetings for free.

Start with the account check, then the action-items prompt. If 30 days turns out to be too short, Business at $14 per user per month buys the history. Leave the transcript tool alone until you need a quote, and check one answer against the notes before you trust the next ten.