Connect Muse to your photo library with OwAI MCP

Your photo library, in a conversation

Ask Muse to find a beach photo, locate a moment in a video, collect your favorite trip pictures or help review duplicates. OwAI combines visual search with filters for recognized people, dates, folders, collections and media type. Muse uses the same library operations as the OwAI app.

This guide connects Meta Muse through a custom connector to OwAI’s hosted MCP server. It does not require OwAI to be listed in Muse’s connector directory and does not claim an official Meta partnership or directory approval. Custom-connector availability and setup prompts depend on your Muse account and version.

Prepare OwAI first

You need an OwAI account with Cloud Access, a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. Free local desktop use does not include MCP. Hosted semantic searches use separate prepaid search credits; current prices and included credits are on the pricing page.

1. Install OwAI and add local photo/video folders, connect Apple Photos on a supported Mac, or connect OneDrive. Let indexing finish. To search by people, enable face detection for the source and label the people you want to find.
2. Sign in to the OwAI account you will use in Muse. For local folders and Apple Photos, enable Cloud index sync and wait for the initial sync to complete. OneDrive uses the shared cloud catalog.
3. If Muse should view local images or video stills, also enable Remote media access in Settings → AI assistants on the owning computer. This is off by default and separate from cloud index sync. Keep an up-to-date OwAI app online; Apple Photos also needs full Photos authorization. OneDrive reads do not need a desktop relay.

• Download OwAI
• Cloud Access and credit pricing
• Connect Apple Photos
• Connect OneDrive

Ask Muse to connect to OwAI

Start a conversation in Muse and paste the request below. Use the public endpoint as written, without a device ID or credentials in the URL. Muse can build a custom connector; you do not need to publish one to its directory first.

Add a custom connector to Organize with AI (OwAI).
MCP server: https://index.organizewith.ai/mcp
Setup guide: https://organizewith.ai/en/guides/connect-muse/index.md
Use the remote MCP server and OAuth sign-in to my OwAI account.
Start with read-only access. After connecting, list my library sources
and their item counts without changing anything.
Do not install a separate local OwAI instance on your cloud computer.

Sign in and check the connection

1. Follow Muse’s connection prompts. Prefer OAuth and complete OwAI sign-in yourself in the provided authorization flow. Review the requested permissions before approving. Use the same account that owns your synced library; never paste a password or access token into the conversation.
2. Return to Muse and let it discover the tools. Ask it to list your library sources and item counts without changing anything. Confirm that the names match your OwAI library; successful sign-in alone does not prove that setup is complete.
3. Ask: Show five photos from Camera Roll with filenames and captured dates. Replace Camera Roll with one of your actual source names. This metadata-only check does not spend semantic-search credits. Then try a visual search with dates you know exist in your library.
4. Review Muse’s connector permissions. Start with reads, and require approval for management actions you are not comfortable delegating. Ask-on-first-use is not confirmation for every future change. Grant OwAI write or delete scopes only when needed; Muse’s own approval settings cannot expand an OAuth token’s permissions.

• OwAI OAuth discovery and registration guide
• Meta’s connector permissions guide

Try these requests

Replace example names, dates and folders with your own. Ask Muse to keep the search scoped to the intended source and to show the results before changing them.

• Find five beach photos from June through August 2026 in Camera Roll.
• Find videos with the dog from our 2024 trip and show the matching timestamps and stills.
• Find pictures showing text 'STOP', then show me the images so I can verify the text.
• Show the 10 newest photos in Camera Roll, with filenames and captured dates.
• Show five duplicate sets from Camera Roll, sorted by most similar, with scores and filenames. Do not delete anything.
• Put these selected hiking photos into a collection called Trails 2026 in this source, after I confirm the selection.

{
  "source_name": "Camera Roll",
  "media_type": "image",
  "captured_from": "2026-06-01",
  "captured_to": "2026-08-31",
  "visual_query": "beach",
  "limit": 5
}

View images, not just filenames

Ask Muse to use read_media for the selected asset. It returns a full image when it fits the 5 MiB inline limit, adapting oversized or incompatible images only as needed, not substituting a tiny gallery thumbnail. Apple Photos supplies its current rendered image rather than an untouched original. Display in the conversation depends on Muse’s support for MCP image output.

For videos, read_media returns a still frame with its timestamp, not a playable movie. Video search finds sampled visual moments; it is not a complete speech transcript. OCR-style search uses text '<your text>', for example text 'STOP'. It ranks images through the visual model, not a guaranteed extracted-text index; inspect the image before relying on the wording.

Muse runs on a cloud computer. Opening Muse on your laptop or phone does not give its agent access to that device’s filesystem or phone gallery. Installing OwAI CLI in Muse’s environment creates a separate local profile; signing in does not copy your laptop’s catalog there. Use the remote MCP connection for your already-synced library.

open_media is a separate same-computer action that opens a window; it is not how Muse receives image bytes. Do not use it from a cloud agent or add a device-specific URL to make Muse open files on another computer.

• How local and remote MCP differ

Review changes and deletion before approving

A duplicate score means the images look similar, not that one is safe to delete. Tell Muse to show exact assets, filenames, favorites and the affected source before proposing cleanup. Inspecting duplicates is not permission to remove them.

1. Preview with preview_media_deletion. It prepares a plan for exact assets without moving originals. Plans expire after 15 minutes; changed files or favorite protection can require a fresh preview.
2. Review the plan and its source-specific recovery warning. Explicitly approve that plan before apply_media_deletion. Favorites are protected by default and need explicit inclusion and approval.
3. Check completion. A queued operation is not a completed change. Muse should inspect get_library_command using the existing command ID, not submit another deletion or collection-creation request. That tool reports an OwAI operation’s status and result; it does not execute shell commands.

• Local-folder files use OwAI recovery for 30 days, after which permanent cleanup runs when OwAI is running and the drive is available. Recovery does not immediately free disk space.
• OneDrive originals use Microsoft’s recycle bin and retention rules. Restore them in OneDrive, then sync.
• Apple Photos originals use Recently Deleted, not OwAI’s recovery bin. Deletion can propagate through iCloud Photos; restore in Photos and sync again. Check native_sync when an album or favorite change needs native Photos confirmation.

• Detailed deletion, approval and recovery workflow

What is shared and what is paid

Cloud index sync stores searchable metadata and embeddings, not your original photo/video library. Originals remain in their source: local storage, Apple Photos or OneDrive. Hosted indexing sends media inputs such as resized images and selected video frames for processing. Local processing avoids those hosted inference uploads, but enabling cloud sync still shares the index, and remote semantic search uses hosted query inference.

When you ask Muse to view an image, the requested image bytes are sent to Muse. OwAI relays local media transiently rather than storing originals in the shared index; OneDrive media is fetched through the connected Microsoft account. Search results and images received by Muse are subject to Meta’s data policies. Local-first does not mean nothing is shared with your connected assistant.

Cloud Access is a one-time unlock. Prepaid credits do not expire. A hosted semantic search costs one search credit; exact metadata-only searches and library-management calls do not consume inference credits. Hosted indexing and Reimagine have their own credit costs. Running models locally in the desktop app does not make Muse’s remote semantic searches local or credit-free. Muse may have separate access requirements or charges.

• OwAI prices and credit usage
• Meta’s explanation of Muse’s cloud environment and permissions

If something does not work

• Empty library: check the OwAI account, completed indexing and Cloud index sync. Ask Muse which endpoint it is using. A new CLI profile in Muse’s cloud environment is not your laptop’s library.
• Sign-in or permission error: finish the OAuth linking flow and authorize the required scopes. Allowing a tool in Muse alone does not grant library:write or library:delete. If Muse cannot complete OAuth, use the auth.md guide to identify the failing step; do not put secrets in chat or disable authentication.
• Images unavailable: check Remote media access on the owning device, its internet connection and current OwAI version. For Apple Photos, also check Photos permission. For OneDrive, check the Microsoft connection instead. Cached search results do not prove originals are currently reachable.
• Pending change: keep the owning app online for local folders and Apple Photos and inspect the existing command result. OneDrive operations run on the server. If a native Photos update failed, resolve the reported error rather than reporting the collection as fully synchronized.
• Missing matches: verify source and capture-date filters, completed indexing and people labels. Keep the visual concept in visual_query and people, dates and folders in structured filters. Do not silently drop filters or replace the requested library with another source.
• Connection blocked before sign-in: record the failing URL, HTTP status and any Cloudflare Ray ID for support. A 401 on an unauthenticated MCP call is expected; an HTML challenge or Error 1010 is not an OAuth permission error. Never send credentials in a support report.

• Contact OwAI support