dabble.me MCP Server

Use This MCP server To

Email myself daily journal prompts and reply to add entries Read past journal entries by month or year Import old journals from OhLife or Day One Search and tag journal entries with hashtags Connect my journal to AI assistants for analysis Add photos to specific journal entries Receive a yearly summary of my journal

README

Dabble Me

A private journal over email service.

Dabble Me helps people remember what's happened in their life. Use it as a light-weight journal on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis...it's up to you! Dabble Me will email you on a time & days you choose - you simply reply to the email to post entries. The app is live at https://dabble.me. This is a great replacement if you had ever used OhLife.

This app utilizes the following 3rd party services:

CloudFlare managed DNS + free SSL support (free for basic service)
Mailgun for Sending & Receiving Email (free for 50k emails per month)
Amazon S3 for Photo Uploads & Storage (free for 1 year)
Google Analytics for traffic stats (free for standard analytics)
Turnstile to prevent bot signups (free).
Sentry to report errors (free)

You will need to setup Mailgun to receive incoming emails and point them to your app to parse.

Scheduled jobs (including hourly email sending) are run by sidekiq-cron inside the Sidekiq worker process. The schedule lives in config/schedule.yml. No external scheduler is required.

Your local environment variables at config/local_env.yml (and on Railway) will need to be something like this (rake db:seed will create the admin@dabble.ex account for you):

MAIN_DOMAIN: yourdomain.com
SECRET_KEY_BASE: 1234..1234
DEVISE_SECRET_KEY: 1234..1234
SMTP_DOMAIN: post.yourdomain.com
MAILGUN_API_KEY=api-key
TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY: 6Lc6BAAAAAAAAChqRbQZcn_yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY: 6Lc6BAAAAAAAAKN3DRm6VA_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID=UA-12345-67 ## ONLY FOR PRODUCTION
SENTRY_DSN: https://dsn.sentry.io/1234
OPENAI_ACCESS_TOKEN: sk-1234
OPENAI_ORGANIZATION_ID: org-1234
HUGGING_FACE_API_KEY: 1234
STRIPE_API_KEY: sk_test_1234
STRIPE_SIGNING_SECRET: whsec_1234

Things you may want to rip out

You can opt to not use Turnstile: simply don't add an environment variables for TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

PRO accounts can use Dabble Me as a remote MCP server so compatible clients (for example Claude) can search, list, analyze, and create journal entries after OAuth.

Requirements: PRO subscription, plus a passkey or two-factor authentication on Account security (/security). Connected OAuth apps can be reviewed and revoked on the same page under Connected apps (shown only when something is connected).

Endpoint: Streamable HTTP at https://<MAIN_DOMAIN>/mcp (see MAIN_DOMAIN in config/local_env.yml). The client should use OAuth: authorization metadata is published under /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server and /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource (see Oauth::MetadataController).

User-facing instructions: Dabble Me MCP Server at /mcp-server on your host.

Deep links for assistants: a single day opens at https://<MAIN_DOMAIN>/entries/YYYY/M/D with unpadded month and day (example: https://dabble.me/entries/2026/4/21). The web compose URL is https://<MAIN_DOMAIN>/write.

For generic remote-connector setup in Claude, see Anthropic’s Get started with custom connectors using remote MCP.

Registry metadata: server.json describes the hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint for the official MCP Registry.

Automated smoke (curl + MCP Inspector CLI): ./script/mcp_inspector_smoke.sh uses RAILS_ENV=test, starts a short-lived Rails server, checks OAuth metadata and /mcp, then runs Inspector against all five tools (tools/list exercises initialize + connect). Aligns with Anthropic’s Testing your connector guidance.

Tests

There is healthy coverage of the app, which you can run with:

rake

Administration Portal

The Admin emails are accounts that have access to the Admin Dropdown in the navbar (lock icon) that give you details into the number of entries and users in the system.

Inspirations and Importers

If you want random bits of inspiration, you can load up different quotes in the Inspiration table to be shown above the New Posts page and at the bottom of emails. Import sources are tagged via Inspiration categories — seed OhLife / Ahhlife / Day One / Trailmix rows (see db/seeds.rb), or the Day One importer will create its category on first use.

Inspiration.create(category: 'OhLife', body: 'Imported from OhLife')
Inspiration.create(category: 'Day One', body: 'Imported from Day One')

PRO users can import from OhLife (text + photo ZIP), Day One (JSON ZIP export), Ahhlife (JSON paste), and Trailmix.life (JSON upload) at /entries/import.

=====

Current features:

Read past entries by month/year
Create new entries with simple formatting
Importers: OhLife, Day One, Ahhlife, Trailmix.life
Email: Reply-to-post new entries on days of the week you choose (with random past entries embedded)
Associate 1 image to a specific entry
Search with basic analytics around posting
Hashtag support for tagging your entries
Year in Review
MCP (PRO): OAuth-backed journal tools for external clients

dabble.me FAQ

Can I use dabble.me to keep a private journal via email?

Yes — dabble.me emails you on scheduled days, and you reply to add journal entries privately.

Can I connect dabble.me to AI assistants like Claude?

Yes — PRO users can connect via OAuth to compatible clients such as Claude for searching and creating journal entries.

Do I need an API key or special account to use dabble.me?

You need a dabble.me account; PRO features require a subscription and two-factor authentication for OAuth access.

How hard is it to set up dabble.me?

Setup is one-click for basic use via the hosted service; advanced setup requires some configuration.

Which apps work with dabble.me?

It works with email clients for journaling and with AI clients supporting MCP like Claude and others for PRO users.

Can I import journals from other services?

Yes — dabble.me supports imports from OhLife, Day One, Ahhlife, and Trailmix.life.