Conclusion first for this category: install the plumbing layer, let the official memory layer do its thing, and write the output layer yourself. Below are 11 real, installable or readable entries, each with a link, an install command, and a when-not-to-install. One of them (apple-mcp, 3.1k stars) was archived read-only on 2026-01-01 — that is the hardest honest cost in this issue.
Meeting notes, inbox, note cleanup, calendar: the four things that look most delegable to AI, and the category where off-the-shelf products help least. The reason is simple. Coding skills have an objective oracle (do the tests pass). Office skills have a deterministic format (is the docx still valid). But what belongs in this meeting's notes is known only to you. So read the table in three layers — pick the wrong layer and you will shop for output skills by star count, then demand that a pipe sound like you.
# 1 Notion first-party plugin (4 skills + 10 slash commands)
/plugin marketplace add makenotion/claude-code-notion-plugin
/plugin install notion-workspace-plugin@notion-plugin-marketplace
# 3 Built in: the toggle and the viewer are the same command
/memory
# 4 A local markdown knowledge graph
uv tool install basic-memory --prerelease=allow
# 6 Obsidian (install the Local REST API plugin first, grab the API key)
uvx mcp-obsidian # set OBSIDIAN_API_KEY / OBSIDIAN_HOST / OBSIDIAN_PORT
# 7, 8, 9 — todos / calendar / highlights
npx @doist/todoist-mcp
npx @cocal/google-calendar-mcp
claude mcp add --transport http readwise https://mcp2.readwise.io/mcp/Notion:search, /Notion:create-page and /Notion:tasks:plan. Kills "manually digging through five pages for meeting background." Skip it if your notes do not live in Notion. Get the name right: a separate team-attention/notion-skills-for-claude has 24 stars and was archived on 2025-12-22 — do not copy that one.examples/ sit four templates: 3p-updates.md (Progress / Plans / Problems), company-newsletter.md, faq-answers.md and general-comms.md; pick the one matching the comms type. This is the structure most worth copying in the whole table: the house style is left as a slot, so swapping the samples makes it yours. Skip it if your company uses none of those formats — then fork the directory shape instead.type field: user (role and preferences), feedback (your corrections), project (work in flight and decisions), reference (where outside information lives). It is stored under ~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/, and only the first 200 lines or 25KB load. The docs state plainly that it skips anything derivable from the codebase and anything your CLAUDE.md already says. Turn it off on shared or demo machines — these are machine-local plaintext notes. Use autoMemoryEnabled: false or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_AUTO_MEMORY=1.~/basic-memory, with a local SQLite index for search. Note the AGPL. Skip it if you already run Obsidian with clear note conventions — two indexes will fight (section 04).create_entities, create_relations, add_observations, search_nodes, read_graph and more), stored in one JSONL file whose path comes from MEMORY_FILE_PATH. Skip it: it calls itself a basic implementation — a single file with no project isolation. Read it as a model, do not run it as your answer.list_files_in_vault, get_file_contents, search, patch_content, append_content, delete_file and one more. Prerequisite: the community plugin obsidian-local-rest-api inside the vault. Skip it if you use Claude Code and the vault is on the same machine — --add-dir reads the files with one less layer, and hands nothing a delete_file.get-freebusy, create-events (batch) and manage-accounts (multi-account). Kills "three people comparing free slots." The cost is in its own README: create a Google Cloud project, enable the Calendar API, configure OAuth desktop credentials — and in test mode the token expires after seven days, so you re-authorize weekly. Skip it if you only wanted to see today's meetings.https://mcp2.readwise.io/mcp with OAuth; tools include readwise_search_highlights, readwise_list_highlights and readwise_create_highlights. Skip it if you do not use Readwise, or if your reading notes already sync into the vault. Stated plainly: this site's egress policy blocks readwise.io and its docs host, so the command and endpoint above come from two consistent search-engine extracts of Readwise's own docs page. Open that page and check before installing.MarkusPfundstein/mcp-obsidian. (2) "Official Notion skills" maps to several same-named notion-mcp-server repos plus one archived mirror. Aggregators and search results are for discovering candidates only — verify every name against the GitHub repo tree or the vendor's own page.Two classic ways to get this wrong: shopping for output skills by star count (you install another company's status-update template, rewrite half of it every time, and would have been better off without it), and demanding that a pipe sound like you (which produces the conclusion "MCP is useless" — it was only ever moving data in).
That is also what SKILLS.md means when it says this category is the one you should build yourself. Not because off-the-shelf quality is bad, but because the output layer's acceptance test lives inside you. Which is why the structure most worth copying is internal-comms: one SKILL.md hanging four sample files — swap the samples, swap the house style.
mcp-obsidian, delete_file and patch_content are the two to watch; for calendars, watch delete-event. If read-only will do, go read-only.Doist/todoist-mcp, makenotion/claude-code-notion-plugin) beats a high-star personal repo. While you are there, check the last commit — and whether there is an archive banner at the top of the page. apple-mcp is this criterion's price tag.examples/ directory under the SKILL.md for you to fill in? internal-comms has four files. Anything with someone else's style baked in has to be rewritten after installing anyway.google-calendar-mcp, seven for mcp-obsidian, nine for the official memory server — turn all three on and thirty tool definitions ride along every turn. Worse is overlap: when two servers can both "search notes," the model has to choose, and one wrong choice costs a full round trip.How to spend the three minutes: one minute on the tool list (that answers 1, 2, 5 and 6 at once), one on the top of the repo page and the commit history (3), one on whether the directory tree has a sample slot (4).
supermemoryai/apple-mcp: 3.1k stars, archived read-only on 2026-01-01. The Notion skills mirror team-attention/notion-skills-for-claude: archived 2025-12-22. A personally maintained integration layer depends on an upstream API not changing, and upstreams never promise that. So star counts are worth less here than in any other category — look at the maintainer.
google-calendar-mcp wants you to create a Google Cloud project, enable the API and configure OAuth desktop credentials, and its README says outright that test-mode tokens expire after seven days. To save yourself "open the calendar and look," you bought a weekly re-authorization. Do that arithmetic before installing.
basic-memory has its own SQLite index and ~/basic-memory directory; your Obsidian vault has its own. Run both and "that decision from last week" exists as half a record on each side. There must be exactly one source of truth: either point basic-memory at the vault directory, or keep only one.
Install these three first: (1) leave /memory on and write a twenty-line CLAUDE.md — free, first-party, applies to every project, and because auto memory skips what your CLAUDE.md already says, the two complement each other. (2) Install exactly one pipe, the one matching your note system: Obsidian → uvx mcp-obsidian (install obsidian-local-rest-api first); Notion → /plugin install notion-workspace-plugin@notion-plugin-marketplace. (3) anthropics/skills · skill-creator — turn the thing you re-explained three times this week into one skill. That is this category's real answer.
Add as needed: Doist/todoist-mcp (if your tasks really are in Todoist) · the Readwise official MCP (if you have highlights in flight) · basicmachines-co/basic-memory (if you have no note system yet, it can be that system) · anthropics/skills · internal-comms (when you need update or announcement formats — copy the structure, swap the samples).
Explicitly do not install: supermemoryai/apple-mcp (archived) · @modelcontextprotocol/server-memory (it calls itself a basic implementation; read it as a model) · basic-memory alongside Obsidian as two indexes · three servers that can all "search notes" at once · any output-layer template with someone else's house style baked in.
user, feedback, project, reference. Machine-local, isolated per repository, and only the first 200 lines or 25KB load.code-reviewer can be useful to you directly. This category's criteria live in your head: nothing arbitrates "what belongs in this meeting's notes" or "why this highlight matters." The inference is deflating but useful: the ceiling on off-the-shelf value here is skipping the steps where you open the app. If you want judgment done for you, you have to write it — which is why skill-creator sits in the top three of the shopping card.~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/, isolated per repository and machine-local (the docs state it is not shared across machines or cloud environments), and it writes only when it judges something worth keeping — it is for the model. basic-memory settles into markdown you can open in Obsidian — it is for humans too. So the question is not which is stronger but whether a person needs to read it. If you already have a vault, the answer is usually: do not add a second store, connect the vault.mcp-obsidian's search and the memory server's search_nodes are both present, the model must first decide where to look, and one wrong choice burns a whole round trip without telling you it chose wrong. The fix is crude and effective: one path per job; turn the overlapping one off.type field's four note kinds, ~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/, the 200-line or 25KB load ceiling, autoMemoryEnabled and CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_AUTO_MEMORY=1 (first-party, 2026-10)examples/: 3p-updates.md, company-newsletter.md, faq-answers.md, general-comms.md; the structure this issue recommends copying (first-party)uvx mcp-obsidian config snippet; prerequisite plugin obsidian-local-rest-api (MIT; ~4.5k stars per the repo page, 2026-10)~/basic-memory; SQLite index (AGPL-3.0; ~4.1k stars per the repo page, 2026-10)MEMORY_FILE_PATH; calls itself a basic implementationget-freebusy and manage-accounts), the Google Cloud and OAuth setup steps, and the seven-day test-mode token (MIT; ~1.2k stars per the repo page, 2026-10)npx @doist/todoist-mcp (MIT; 554 stars per the repo page, 2026-10)https://mcp2.readwise.io/mcp, the claude mcp add --transport http install, OAuth, and tools such as readwise_search_highlights (this site could not reach the domain directly; the data comes from two consistent search-engine extracts of that page, so verify before installing)