3. Hybrid Intelligence Architecture

Status: Accepted

Context

Nate’s guide puts embedding generation and metadata extraction inside the MCP server using OpenRouter API calls. However, we use Claude.ai as the primary interface — it is already an LLM capable of understanding context.

Decision

The MCP server is dumb CRUD. Claude.ai Project instructions direct Claude to extract metadata (people, topics, action_items, type) from conversations before calling capture_thought with structured content and metadata. Embedding generation is deferred to Phase 2.

Consequences

• No OpenRouter API key needed at launch

• Claude.ai does the thinking — better metadata quality (it has full context)

• MCP server is simpler to maintain and debug

• Semantic vector search unavailable until Phase 2 (metadata-only filtering)

• Metadata extraction quality depends on Claude.ai Project instructions