Filmlog for Mac includes an MCP server. Connect it to an AI assistant on your Mac and you can ask about your own library the way you would ask a person: what you watched last winter, which Kurosawa films you still have not seen, how a challenge is coming along. If you allow it, the assistant can also add to the watchlist, rate, favourite, follow people and pin cinemas, each change waiting for your approval in Filmlog. Filmlog answers on this Mac. It is an interface to your existing data, not a chatbot inside the app.
Coming soon: Filmlog for Mac. This guide describes the setup as it works once the Mac app is released.
This guide is in English for now. Once it is localized, it is extended to all the languages the app speaks.
Filmlog 2026.9 for Mac Coming soon, from the Mac App Store or TestFlight.
Filmlog Plus. The MCP server is part of Filmlog Plus. Every TestFlight build has Plus unlocked.
A library on this Mac. Turn on multi-device support to bring your library over from iPhone or iPad, import from another service, or log films on the Mac directly. An empty library answers nothing.
An AI app that supports MCP servers running on the same Mac, for example Claude Desktop.
The Status section shows MCP server: Installed and Library data with the number of films and when they were last prepared. If Library data says Not prepared yet, make any change in your library, for example log a film, and look again a few seconds later.
Click Copy configuration in Filmlog. In Claude Desktop open Settings › Developer › Edit Config, which opens the file claude_desktop_config.json in your editor. Paste the configuration; if the file already lists other servers, add Filmlog's entry inside the existing mcpServers block. Save, then quit and reopen Claude Desktop. Filmlog now appears among the connected tools in a new chat.
The configuration Filmlog copies looks like this, with the path of your own installation:
{
"mcpServers": {
"filmlog": {
"command": "/Applications/Filmlog.app/Contents/Helpers/FilmlogMCP.app/Contents/MacOS/FilmlogMCP"
}
}
}
Click Copy path in Filmlog. In your AI app, add a local MCP server that runs as a command on this Mac: name it filmlog, use the copied path as the command, and leave the arguments empty. Apps that keep their servers in a configuration file take the same JSON block as above. Restart the app if it does not pick the server up on its own.
The first time an AI app reads your library, macOS asks whether that app may access Filmlog's data. Allow it. The question that triggered the dialog may come back with an error; ask it again. This happens once for each AI app.
By default an assistant can only read your library. In the same settings pane, turn on Changes. With Ask me first, every change the assistant proposes waits in Filmlog until you approve it; the Changes row counts what is waiting and Show opens the list. Approved changes stay in that list with an Undo, so nothing an assistant does is out of your hands.
Filmlog answers in the appreciation system you use in the app: hearts, five stars or ten points. In hearts mode it will not mention ratings and will refuse to set one; it never converts between systems.
With Changes turned on:
Swap the names for films and people in your own library; the assistant searches your library, not all of cinema.
The server answers from your library and from the catalogue that ships with the app: your watchlist, what you have seen and when, per-film details, challenges and their progress, statistics for this year, the last twelve months and all time, and a search of your own library by title.
Directors are a question it can answer across your library, because the catalogue covers them well. Cast, composers, cinematographers and other roles are not: the open data behind the catalogue covers too few of them to promise a complete answer, so the assistant will tell you what it knows about a single film rather than claim a full list.
Notes on a viewing, the people you watched with and the cinema are part of the diary in the app; the assistant sees a film's note, not every entry's.
Filmlog is not among the tools. Start a new chat; a chat opened before the server was registered keeps its old list.
Every answer is an error. Quit and reopen the AI app. It keeps one copy of the server running for the whole session, and after a Filmlog update that copy is the old one.
The permission dialog was dismissed. Grant the AI app access to Filmlog's data in System Settings › Privacy & Security, then ask again.
"Filmlog Plus is required." The server checks the Mac app's Plus status; open Filmlog › Settings › Filmlog Plus.
Claude Desktop keeps a log at ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-filmlog.log, which shows whether the server was started and answered.
Anything else: mail@simonbraun.studio.
Apple, Mac, macOS and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic PBC. MCP is the Model Context Protocol, an open standard.