MARK IT DOWN
Mark It Down
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Claude Code Plugin (mark-it-down-claude)

Status: shipped in Phase 0.13 · Issue: #14 · Depends on: #7 Notes sidebar, #9 MCP server, #10 Notes warehouse, #11 Publish, #12 Slideshow

The Mark It Down Claude Code plugin packages the bundled MCP server, 6 user-invocable skills, and 3 specialist sub-agents into a single installable unit. One install gives Claude Desktop / Claude Code users the full Mark It Down toolkit — note CRUD, slideshow design, public publish, warehouse curation — without any manual MCP wiring.

At a glance

Where it livesplugins/mark-it-down-claude/ in this repo (intended to be moved to a dedicated repo fadymondy/mark-it-down-claude for marketplace distribution)
What ships.claude-plugin/plugin.json manifest, .mcp.json server entry, bin/server.js (built copy), 6 skills, 3 agents, README
Bundle targetnpm run build:claude-plugin copies out/mcp/server.js → plugins/mark-it-down-claude/bin/server.js so the plugin is self-contained
InstallLocal: claude --plugin-dir ./plugins/mark-it-down-claude. Marketplace (when published): /plugin install mark-it-down@mark-it-down

What's in the bundle

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The 6 skills

User-invocable via the standard /skill-name syntax in Claude Desktop / Code.

SkillWhen to useTool calls
/mid:new-note"Save this", "make a note about X"create_note
/mid:list-notes"What notes do I have", "list my Drafts"list_notes
/mid:open"Open the X note", "what did I write about Y"list_notes (resolve) → get_note
/mid:slideshow"Make slides from this", "turn X into a deck"get_note (if from a note); produces slide-ready markdown for the F11 publish pipeline
/mid:publish"Publish this note", "share publicly"get_note; tells the user the exact F10 publish command to run
/mid:warehouse-status"Check warehouse", "is my warehouse in sync"list_notes (count + recency) + asks user about VSCode status bar

Skills 4 and 5 (slideshow, publish) intentionally do not push directly — the publish pipeline lives in the VSCode extension. The skills produce the input + tell the user the right command.

The 3 agents

Specialist sub-agents the user (or another skill) can delegate to.

notes-curator

Audits + organizes the warehouse — dedupes, recategorizes, generates Index notes. Conservative: proposes batches, never deletes without confirmation, doesn't edit note bodies. Operates exclusively through the MCP list_notes / get_note / update_note / create_note / delete_note tools.

slideshow-designer

Restructures long-form markdown into talk-ready decks. Adds frontmatter (theme, transition), inserts slide breaks, splits dense paragraphs, adds speaker notes via Notes: blocks. Outputs slide-ready markdown for the F11 reveal.js generator. Designer, not transcriber — never invents content; if the source is thin, asks the user.

note-summarizer

Single-note / category / theme digests. Faithful to source (no invention), useful before exhaustive (top 3–5 bullets), format-aware (standup digest vs blog intro vs retrospective). Pure-read — doesn't write back to the warehouse.

How install works

The plugin's .mcp.json entry tells Claude Desktop / Code how to launch the bundled MCP server:

jsonc

${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} is replaced by Claude with the plugin's install dir. ${MID_NOTES_DIR} defaults to ~/.mark-it-down/notes (standalone use); users running the VSCode extension should override it to the extension's globalStorage path so both Claude and VSCode see the same notes:

OSVSCode extension's notes dir
macOS~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/fadymondy.mark-it-down/notes
Linux~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage/fadymondy.mark-it-down/notes
Windows%APPDATA%/Code/User/globalStorage/fadymondy.mark-it-down/notes

Restart Claude Desktop / Code after install (MCP configs are read at startup).

Build & ship

$ pnpm build:claude-plugin

Re-runs the MCP server bundle (compile:mcp) and copies out/mcp/server.js into plugins/mark-it-down-claude/bin/server.js. Run this whenever the MCP server source changes so the plugin ships a fresh build.

For marketplace distribution, the plugin directory is intended to live in its own repo (fadymondy/mark-it-down-claude). The build script is non-destructive — it just refreshes bin/server.js. To produce a release, sync the directory to the dedicated repo, tag it (v0.1.0), and use the standard /plugin marketplace add flow.

How it composes with the VSCode extension

Both run against the same on-disk store (<notes-dir>/_mcp-index.json + per-note <id>.md files). The VSCode extension owns the canonical state (writes the snapshot on every NotesStore change); the Claude plugin reads from + mutates the same files via the MCP server.

Standalone-only use is supported: just leave MID_NOTES_DIR at the default ~/.mark-it-down/notes and the plugin operates without VSCode.

Limitations

  • Workspace-scope notes are invisible to the plugin. They live per-VSCode-window and aren't addressable from outside. Use the warehouse repo (F9) to surface workspace notes across machines/clients.
  • get_active_markdown and list_open_md are stubs in the underlying MCP server — they require a live IPC channel between the running VSCode extension and the spawned MCP server, which is on the v1+ roadmap. The skills don't try to use them.
  • The plugin lives in this repo for now. Marketplace distribution requires moving it to its own repo (fadymondy/mark-it-down-claude) — npm run build:claude-plugin produces a fully self-contained directory you can sync over.
  • Plugin version is independent of the VSCode extension version. Re-run build:claude-plugin after extension changes to ship a fresh server build.

Files of interest