Forty Pirates

Ask for your places like you'd ask a friend

Connect Forty Pirates to Claude, Codex, Cursor or any other assistant that speaks MCP, and it can use your travel workspace for you. No commands to learn — you say what you want, in your own words. Setting it up takes one paste and one click.

Or set it up by hand
Claude Code Claude Desktop & claude.ai ChatGPT Codex Cursor VS Code & Copilot Zed Warp Raycast Pi OpenCode Any MCP client

Paste it into your assistant and it will connect itself.

Make a list of these five cafés in Kyoto.
Task one

Find something you already saved

Everything you've kept — places, dishes, little walks, notes to yourself — searched at once. This is your own collection, not the internet.

Task two

Turn a video or article into places

Paste any YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or article link. It watches or reads it and hands back what was mentioned. Nothing is saved until you say so.

a link you paste Tsuta — the soy ramen Fuglen Tokyo Yanaka Ginza Keep all of them, or just the ones you want.
Task three

Build a list out of names

Read names off a screenshot, a message from a friend, or the top of your head. Each becomes the actual place — the right branch, on the map, with a photo.

Say the city

This is the one that bites. Ask for “Blue Bottle” with no city and you'll get the one in New York — it's the branch the world ranks highest. Say “these are all in Kyoto” once, and every name in the batch lands in Kyoto.

Task four

Make it a ranking, a route, or a trip

The same places, read differently. Say which you mean and it opens that way.

A RANKING best first — it's an opinion 1 Kikunoi Honten 2 Weekenders Coffee 3 Kissa Master Walking it in this order would make no sense. A ROUTE in the order you'd walk it start The first stop is just the nearest one, not the best.
Both are “in order”, so say which you mean. If the order is an opinion, it's a ranking. If it's a walk, it's a route — and it draws a line on the map.

A list can also be something to vote on, something you and friends edit together, or an invitation people reply to. Changing what kind of list it is never changes who can see it — sharing stays a separate decision.

Task five

See where your friends have been

Your friends mark places they've been and places they want to go. Ask about a city and all of it comes back together — with who, and what they thought.

Kikunoi Honten Sam and Mia both loved it loved it Fushimi Inari Taisha Sam — “went at 6am, completely empty” been Nishiki Market Mia — “too crowded by 11am” went, wasn't keen Narisawa you and Dan both want to go both want to go Name a city and you get that city. Ask with no city and you get everywhere at once.
“Went, wasn't keen” is kept on purpose. A friend going and coming back unimpressed is the most useful thing they can tell you, and it's the first thing most apps throw away.

And the people you follow

Everyone you follow, answered at once. When two of them who don't know each other land on the same small bar, that agreement shows up first.

Worth knowing

A creator you follow is not a friend. “@eatLA has been” is a magazine's recommendation; “Mia has been” is someone you know. They're kept apart — so be suspicious of “three friends went” if one of them is a publication.

Task six

Get a recommendation you can actually judge

The same evidence, put in order — not a score out of ten from strangers. Each suggestion arrives with its reason, so you can weigh it yourself.

LOWERS IT RAISES IT A friend loved it counts most A friend went Someone you follow picked it A friend wants to go It's on your wish list A friend wasn't keen You've already been — drops off the list
Somewhere you've already been is a memory, not a suggestion. Somewhere you said you wanted to go stays, and moves up.
Task seven

Add your own photo and why it's there

A place someone vouched for beats a place. Attach the article you read it in, and the photograph you took.

Kismet “The lamb is the thing.” Your note · found at Eater LA Your photograph goes first It replaces the generic map photo, and leads the gallery. The article stays yours It reads as “you found this at Eater LA” — never as though the writer recommended it to you. Photos are copied and kept, so a dead link can never empty your card.

Five things worth saying out loud

Everything else it can work out. These five it can't guess — and each is the difference between a good answer and a plausible wrong one.

  1. Where in the worldThe city, once, for the whole batch. Without it, popular names land in the wrong country.
  2. Which article, not which website“I read it in Eater” is worth keeping. “eater.com” will tell you nothing in six months.
  3. Whether the order is an opinion or a walkA ranking and a route look identical until someone tries to follow one.
  4. Which city, when you ask about friendsUnscoped you get every place anyone you know has ever marked. Name the city and it fits on a screen.
  5. Out loud, before anything is deletedAdding is cheap and undoable. Deleting shows up in your app straight away — so it should be asked about first.

What it can't do, on purpose

These limits are what make the friends half safe to switch on at all.

Connect it to the assistant you use

Forty Pirates runs as a hosted MCP server, so any of the clients above can use it. Your browser opens once so you can approve access — after that you are never asked again.

Claude Code

plugin

Paste these two lines. The plugin brings the skill with it.

/plugin marketplace add contextforce/fortypirates-skill /plugin install fortypirates-workspace@fortypirates

Or add it as a plain MCP server instead:

claude mcp add --transport http fortypirates https://fortypirates.com/api/mcp

Claude Desktop & claude.ai

connector

No plugin needed — add it as a custom connector.

  1. Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
  2. Name it fortypirates
  3. Paste the server URL below
  4. Leave the OAuth fields under Advanced empty — they are optional
https://fortypirates.com/api/mcp

Every other assistant with MCP connectors works the same way: give it that URL.

Then just ask it something

The first question opens a browser tab. Click Allow, and it carries on from where it was. You will need a free account at fortypirates.com.

Turning it off

Your lists are private unless you share them. To disconnect an assistant from your account, go to fortypirates.com/settings/cli and click disconnect — it stops working immediately.