Notes MCP and Documentation Follow-ups from ChatGPT Review

Origin: ChatGPT review on 2026-06-29 after reading the notes bootstrap key, README, TRIGGERS, MEMORY, README/agent, and the existing todo/improvement notes.

Purpose: collect improvement suggestions that appeared not to be documented already, or only indirectly documented, so they can be worked through later without relying on the chat transcript.

Open Items

MCP success-response shape consistency — During the review, get("README") returned a parsed result, but keys() and get(..., include_block_ids=true) returned a text field containing stringified JSON. This is awkward for agents and increases parsing risk. Existing todo notes mention text-wrapped errors, but this exact success-response inconsistency should be recorded and investigated.

Update README/mcp-tools to list all seven MCP tools — The document lists keys, get, put, patch, batch, and table_op, but omits delete. mcp-interface-improvements already records that the current MCP tool set is seven tools, so the main MCP documentation is drifting.

Generated or verified MCP capability summary — Consider a generated note or smoke-test output that records the current MCP manifest and expected response shapes. This would catch drift between server implementation, connector registration, documentation, and what ChatGPT/Claude actually see. It complements the existing MCP smoke-test idea but should explicitly include manifest/capability verification.

Clean up structural oddities in existing docs/todos — Several notes look internally mis-sectioned or duplicated: README repeats Quick Rules-style material under Runnable Documents; README/orphaning places the Index Pages section in the middle of metadata preservation; gdata-server/todo has a Private notes instance item under Completed although it reads as open; notes-browser/todo has Cell output scroll control via API under Completed although it reads as a todo.

Todo/status schema for todo notes — Free-text todo notes make it easy for open work to appear under Completed or for status to be ambiguous. Consider a convention for todo items with fields such as status (open/done/deferred), priority, owner, target date, and needs-John-decision. This relates to, but is broader than, the existing interactive-checkbox idea in notes-browser/todo.

Split workflow documentation by interfaceREADME/workflow is mostly CLI-first, using notes read / local JSON file / notes load -d. That remains correct for CLI work, but MCP/agent editing is now important enough that the workflow page should explicitly branch into CLI workflow versus MCP/agent workflow, linking to README/mcp-tools and the safe-edit strategy notes.

Suggested First Pass

1. Fix or document the MCP success-response shape inconsistency, because it directly affects agent reliability.

2. Update README/mcp-tools to include delete and clarify the current seven-tool set.

3. Add a manifest/check output to the MCP smoke test so documentation drift is caught automatically.

4. Clean the mis-sectioned documentation/todo entries as a separate content-maintenance pass.

Related Existing Notes

gdata-server/todo — parent todo list for gdata-server and notes-system improvements.

gdata-server/todo/mcp-interface-improvements — existing MCP interface findings and improvement list.

gdata-server/todo/jsonhtl-documentation-improvements — JSONHTL documentation and linter gaps.

README/mcp-tools — current MCP workflow/tool documentation.

README/workflow and README/orphaning — broader note creation and maintenance rules.

version 1  ·  created 2026-06-29  ·  updated 2026-06-29  ·  tags gdata-server, notes, mcp, documentation, todo, chatgpt