Cinch

Remote clipboard for developer context. Local history. Cross-machine clipboard. MCP tools.

This is the monorepo for the Cinch client toolkit:

• crates/client-core — shared Rust library (wire schema, crypto, HTTP, WebSocket, storage)
• crates/cli — the cinch CLI binary
• apps/desktop — Cinch Desktop macOS app (Tauri v2)

The relay server lives in a separate repository: cinchcli/relay.

What it does

• Local-first clipboard history — terminal output, copied text, and desktop clipboard entries live in ~/.cinch/store.db on your machine.
• Remote clipboard / self-hostable relay — move clips between terminal and desktop through a hosted or self-hosted relay; the relay stores ciphertext only.
• MCP + transforms for AI workflows — expose local clipboard history to AI tools, transform/redact text, or explicitly prepare terminal errors with cinch ai fix.

Install

macOS — Desktop + CLI (recommended):

brew install --cask cinchcli/tap/cinch

macOS — CLI only (headless servers, CI):

brew install cinchcli/tap/cinch

Linux — curl installer:

curl -fsSL https://cinchcli.com/install.sh | sh

Short alias: ci is installed as a shorthand for cinch — every command works under both names (ci pull, ci send, …).

AI workflow v1

cinch ai fix turns terminal, log, or error output into an AI-ready debugging prompt. It only calls a provider when you explicitly configure or select one; --no-send never calls an AI provider.

cargo test 2>&1 | cinch ai fix --no-send
cat error.log | cinch ai fix
cinch ai fix latest --no-send
cinch ai fix 01HXABCD --no-send

Provider boundary:

• hosted-bedrock — Cinch-operated managed provider for hosted distributions.
• bedrock-byok — BYOK AWS Bedrock boundary for self-hosters/developers.
• openai-compatible — Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, or OpenAI-compatible endpoints.

Private clipboard for your AI tools (MCP)

cinch mcp exposes your local clipboard history (read-only) to MCP-aware AI tools so they can search and fetch what you copied — no manual paste. It runs against ~/.cinch/store.db on your machine and does not contact the relay.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add cinch -- cinch mcp

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json or project .cursor/mcp.json):

{ "mcpServers": { "cinch": { "command": "cinch", "args": ["mcp"] } } }

Tools: search_clipboard, list_recent_clipboard, get_clipboard_item. Read-only; local-only; no relay/network access.

Privacy: this exposes local clipboard history to the AI client you configure. Hosted relay retention (7 days by default) does not limit local history. To narrow what MCP returns, set CINCH_MCP_MAX_AGE_DAYS (e.g. 90); unset (default) exposes full local history.

Project clipboard (cinch use)

Commit a cinch.yaml to your repo declaring named, optionally-templated clips. Anyone in the project runs cinch use <name> to drop the resolved snippet on their clipboard. Variables ({{token}}) are filled at use-time from --var, the declared env var, or a default — so the command shape is shared in git while secrets stay out of the repo. Run cinch use --list to see what's available, or bare cinch use to pick interactively. It never executes anything; it only copies.

Development

Requirements: Rust stable, Node 22+, pnpm, buf, Go (for proto bindings used by the relay).

# Build everything
make build

# Run tests
make test

# Develop desktop app
make dev-desktop

See docs/ for architecture and contribution guides.

License

AGPL-3.0 OR LicenseRef-cinchcli-commercial — see LICENSE.