Woof is the frontend to OuEstCharlie, a modern photo gallery integrated into Claude Desktop (and other AI assistants). Woof is an MCP app: it acts both as a connector between your photo library and Claude, and as a user interface for browsing photos. Metadata flows through Claude while gallery and photo files remain local to your machine.

Security

Woof is a local MCP server connected to Claude via the STDIO protocol. This means:

  • Claude launches and stops Woof
  • No specific authentication is required, since both application processes are coupled

Woof uses Python for the server, JavaScript for the gallery frontend, and Rust for image processing. Security of the code and dependencies is continuously checked by GitHub. You can check the current status on the security page of Woof.

Pre-requisites

You need to install Claude Desktop on your machine. OuEstCharlie Woof is not compatible with the web version of Claude.

Woof is installed by the uv Python package manager, which is normally bundled with Claude Desktop. If you run into issues, see the Troubleshooting section below.

System prerequisites (all install options):

  • macOS: brew install inih brotli gettext (required by pyexiv2 at runtime)
  • Linux/Windows: no extra steps

Install Woof in Claude

The simplest way to install Woof is through the MCP bundle included in the Woof releases: download the latest ouestcharlie-woof-x.y.z.mcpb file.

Double-click on the downloaded MCP bundle will fail in latest versions of Claude

If double-clicking the ouestcharlie-woof-x.y.z.mcpb file does not open Claude, you can install it directly from the Claude Desktop settings by clicking the Extensions tab:

Select Extension in Claude Desktop Settings

Enable Advanced Settings, then click Install Extension. In the file browser dialog, select the ouestcharlie-woof-x.y.z.mcpb file and follow the install steps described above.

Install Extension in Claude Desktop Settings

A second confirmation step is required:

Validate Woof install in Claude Desktop

Once successful, the Woof extension appears as enabled:

Woof extension is enabled in Claude Desktop

First steps in Claude Desktop

You can verify that Woof is correctly installed by asking Claude: “Is OuEstCharlie Woof loaded?” Claude may ask you to authorize listing libraries — see below for details.

Check if Woof is loaded in Claude Desktop

Before searching and browsing photos, you need to point Woof to your photo library. This is done by creating a library, which consists of a nickname and the path to your photo library on your local drive.

Define a Woof library in Claude Desktop

Supported drive types are:

  • filesystem: any local or local-area network drive
  • cloud_mounted: cloud drives such as iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, or kDrive

Cloud-mounted drives may cause issues if photo files are “dehydrated” (i.e. their content is not immediately available locally). The workaround is to download the files before indexing the library.

Creating a library will require your confirmation.

It is recommended to allow only once for commands that modify your drive — such as create library and index library. For read-only commands like list libraries, list search fields, search, or browse, you can allow permanently.

Allow creation of a Woof library in Claude Desktop

Once the library has been added, the next step is to index its contents. Indexing extracts metadata (date, GPS location, dimensions, tags, etc.) and generates optimized thumbnails. Depending on library size, drive throughput, and machine performance, this may take several minutes. Typical indexing speed is 500–1,500 photos/min.

Trigger library index in Claude Desktop

On macOS, an additional permission prompt may appear:

Allow Woof to access document files in Claude Desktop

Durign the indexing, a progress bar is shown as well as details of the last indexed partitions. When indexing is complete, the UI displays a summary of the library and the indexing results:

Indexing summary in Claude Desktop

Claude and Woof are ready to start photo search and browsing.

You can now search and browse your library using Claude’s prompt for queries, and the Woof UI to explore results — either inline in the chat or in full-screen:

Search and Browse using Woof in Claude Desktop

Alternative to bundle install in Claude Desktop

If install based on the bundle (.mcpb file) fails, you will need to edit the developer configuration as explained in the README of Woof.

Troubleshooting

If Claude is unable to use the Woof MCP tools, inspect the logs. From Settings → Developer, select the Woof logs. A successful install should produce output similar to this screenshot:

Woof install logs in Claude Desktop