Give your AI coding agent a shared to-do list with MCP

Your agent finishes a code review and lists five issues. Three hours later, the chat has scrolled away and so have the issues.

That happens a lot. Agents produce work for you, not only code. A migration needs a manual check on production. A refactor leaves a TODO for the next sprint. If those items live only in the agent's chat history, they are easy to forget.

The Focus Pad MCP server gives you and the agent one shared checklist. The agent writes tasks to it. Focus Pad shows them in an always-on-top window and reminds you about them.

In short

• Turn on the MCP server in Focus Pad and connect Claude Code with one copied command.
• The agent can add, change, complete and delete tasks, with priority, color, deadline and Pesky reminders.
• It runs on 127.0.0.1 only, needs a token, and is off by default.
• It cannot touch your collections, headings, notes or color names.

What MCP is, in one paragraph

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets an AI agent call tools in other programs. Focus Pad exposes six tools over MCP. The agent reads their descriptions, so you do not have to explain the formats.

Turn on the server

1. Open Preferences → Focus Pad.
2. In MCP server for AI agents, turn on the switch.
3. Optional: change the Port. The default is 47821.
4. Click Save.

The card now shows Running on 127.0.0.1:47821. No restart needed.

Connect Claude Code

Click the copy icon next to Connect Claude Code, then run the command in a terminal. It looks like this:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user dwp-focuspad http://127.0.0.1:47821/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

The app fills in your token and port for you. Because of --scope user, the server is available in all your projects, so you only do this once.

Start Claude Code and type /mcp. You should see dwp-focuspad listed as connected. Try it: "Show my Focus Pad collections."

Other MCP clients

Any client with Streamable HTTP and custom headers can connect:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dwp-focuspad": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:47821/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <token>" }
    }
  }
}

Fields the agent can set

1 1 2 1 acme-shop

Today

Fix checkout bug from #334 Today 17:00 20m

Reply to Sam about the invoice export

Review pull request #298 Fri 17:00

Update the deployment docs

Write release notes

DevWorkspace Pronow

Pesky

Fix checkout bug from #334

acme-shop

Next nudge in 14m · sent 3

5m 10m 15m 20m 30m 45m 1h 2h

Call off Pesky

Give a task a pesky interval and you get a desktop notification at that interval until you complete it. See Pesky reminders.

Three workflows that work well

Code review to job board. Ask: "Make a Job board collection and add each open item from this review." The agent sets priority 5 and a deadline on the item that blocks the release, plus Pesky at 30 minutes. You get a nudge every 30 minutes until it is done.

End-of-session hand-off. Before you close a long session, ask: "Add the remaining steps to my Focus Pad, in the collection for this project." Tomorrow morning, the steps wait in your checklist instead of a closed terminal.

Standing instructions. Put the rules in your CLAUDE.md. For example: "Keep open review items in the Focus Pad collection Job board. Use priority 5 and Pesky every 30 minutes for items that block a release."

Why a list outside your head helps

Psychologists call this cognitive offloading: using external tools to reduce mental effort. Setting a reminder on your phone is a common example (Risko & Gilbert, 2016). In online experiments with 1,196 participants, external reminders improved performance on a task where people had to remember intentions for later (Gilbert, 2015).

When the agent writes its open items into your list, it does the offloading for you. You no longer need to remember what it said three hours ago.

Safe edits when you both touch the list

You and the agent can edit the same list. To change a task, the agent sends its index and its current text as expectedText. If you moved, sorted or changed tasks since the agent last read the list, the text will not match. The app refuses the change, and the agent reads the list again.

One catch: the check compares only text. If two tasks have the same text and swap places, the check cannot tell. Give tasks different text when this matters.

Each change leaves every other line as it was: headings, notes, other tasks and color names.

Security

• Only this computer. The server listens on 127.0.0.1.
• Token. Each request needs the token. A request without it gets 401 and changes nothing.
• No web pages. The server refuses requests from web pages in your browser.
• Off by default.
• New token. Click Regenerate token to disconnect all agents.

Treat the token like a password. Do not commit it to Git.

Limits to know

• DevWorkspace Pro must be open. When it is closed, the agent gets a connection error.
• If the agent completes a task that came from a GitHub issue, the issue stays open. Complete the task yourself in Focus Pad to close the issue too.
• If you type in a collection at the same moment the agent changes it, one of the changes can be lost.

The full reference is in Focus Pad MCP.

References

• Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002
• Gilbert, S. J. (2015). Strategic offloading of delayed intentions into the external environment. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(5), 971–992. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.972963