After 17 years I cancelled RTM — the MCP brought me back
After 15 years of RTM Pro I cancelled my subscription. The MCP brought me back the same day.
For the last while I had been building a personal knowledge system in Obsidian, with Claude Code as my main interface — Obsidian basically as the IDE, Claude Code as the brain. (Claude Code does not require Obsidian, by the way — any plain folder of Markdown works.) Over time the system needed task management. I tried doing it inside Obsidian with the Tasks plugin — checkboxes living inside the notes themselves. It worked, technically. But it never felt like real task management.
I had been going back and forth on this for weeks. The RTM Android app was actually one of the reasons I kept hesitating — nothing else feels that solid on mobile. Eventually I cancelled anyway.
Then — moments after the cancellation, I'm not exaggerating — I noticed the MCP banner in the footer of rememberthemilk.com. I plugged it into Claude Code that same day. Suddenly my notes-system and my task list were having a conversation. "Capture this", "what's in the Homelab list", "mark this done with a note about what worked" — all in the same terminal where I'm already working.
I'd played with the RTM API before, but it always meant writing and maintaining a wrapper. The MCP makes Claude itself the wrapper — no scripts, no middleware, no syntax to remember.
My setup today:
- One list per area of life — Homelab, Work, Music, Personal, Projects.
- Projects don't get their own lists — they live in one shared "Projects" list with tags like #server-rebuild or #book-research. A Smart List per area uses a filter like list:Homelab OR tag:homelab; a Smart List per project uses list:Projects AND tag:server-rebuild. Same pattern, two layers.
- Every time I complete a task, I add a short note — what I did, what I learned. After a few weeks, my completed tasks have turned into a personal log.
Daily flow: in the morning, Claude reads my RTM Inbox plus tasks due within three days into a snapshot. In the evening, I review and shift things in conversation. Capturing during the day is just "remember to X" — Claude routes it to the right list and tag automatically. On the go, a small Telegram bot drops anything I send it straight into the RTM Inbox — no priority, sorted at the next pass.
The MCP is the moment RTM stopped being "a separate app I need to remember to open" and became part of how I actually work.
For the last while I had been building a personal knowledge system in Obsidian, with Claude Code as my main interface — Obsidian basically as the IDE, Claude Code as the brain. (Claude Code does not require Obsidian, by the way — any plain folder of Markdown works.) Over time the system needed task management. I tried doing it inside Obsidian with the Tasks plugin — checkboxes living inside the notes themselves. It worked, technically. But it never felt like real task management.
I had been going back and forth on this for weeks. The RTM Android app was actually one of the reasons I kept hesitating — nothing else feels that solid on mobile. Eventually I cancelled anyway.
Then — moments after the cancellation, I'm not exaggerating — I noticed the MCP banner in the footer of rememberthemilk.com. I plugged it into Claude Code that same day. Suddenly my notes-system and my task list were having a conversation. "Capture this", "what's in the Homelab list", "mark this done with a note about what worked" — all in the same terminal where I'm already working.
I'd played with the RTM API before, but it always meant writing and maintaining a wrapper. The MCP makes Claude itself the wrapper — no scripts, no middleware, no syntax to remember.
My setup today:
- One list per area of life — Homelab, Work, Music, Personal, Projects.
- Projects don't get their own lists — they live in one shared "Projects" list with tags like #server-rebuild or #book-research. A Smart List per area uses a filter like list:Homelab OR tag:homelab; a Smart List per project uses list:Projects AND tag:server-rebuild. Same pattern, two layers.
- Every time I complete a task, I add a short note — what I did, what I learned. After a few weeks, my completed tasks have turned into a personal log.
Daily flow: in the morning, Claude reads my RTM Inbox plus tasks due within three days into a snapshot. In the evening, I review and shift things in conversation. Capturing during the day is just "remember to X" — Claude routes it to the right list and tag automatically. On the go, a small Telegram bot drops anything I send it straight into the RTM Inbox — no priority, sorted at the next pass.
The MCP is the moment RTM stopped being "a separate app I need to remember to open" and became part of how I actually work.
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