Use Claude With Your Lists and Home Inventory: The Intellist Connector

Every inventory I’ve made has stalled in the same place. Not the tagging, not the boxes, not deciding what to track. The typing. Standing over an open box of kitchen stuff, thumbing “stand mixer, baking sheets, rolling pin, measuring cups” into a phone, then doing it again for the next box, and the next.

That’s the job I wanted an assistant for, and it’s why Intellist now has a connector for Claude. Claude can already look at a photo and tell you what’s in it. The connector lets it put what it sees straight onto your Intellist list, where it syncs to your phone like anything you typed yourself.

It does more than that, and I’ll cover all of it below, but if you only remember one thing: take a photo of the open box, and let Claude write the list.

A connector is a way for Claude to use another app on your behalf while you chat. You connect it once and sign in with your Intellist account, and from then on you can ask Claude about your lists in plain language. Here’s what it can do:

• Read your lists, including lists shared with you in a group.
• Search items across every list, so “where’s the spare charger?” finds it without you remembering which list it’s on.
• Create lists, either checklists or inventory lists with quantities.
• Add items, one or a dozen at a time.
• Edit an item: rename it, change its description, or set its quantity.
• Check items off and uncheck them.

Everything Claude changes syncs to the Intellist app on your iPhone at its next sync. The lists are the same lists. There’s no separate “AI version” of your inventory to keep in step.

This is the one I use most, and it’s the one that changes how long a moving inventory takes. The routine for each box:

1. Pack the box, but don’t tape it yet.
2. Take a photo of it open in the Claude app on your phone.
3. Tell Claude where it goes. Something like: “Make an inventory list called Kitchen 4 and add what’s in this box.”
4. Read what Claude lists. It will name what it can see. Correct anything it got wrong, and add what’s buried under the top layer (“there’s also a hand mixer underneath”).
5. Tape it and label it Kitchen 4. If you use NFC tags, write the tag in the Intellist app so a tap on the box opens the list.

Two honest notes. Claude can only list what the photo shows, so the stuff at the bottom of a deep box needs a sentence from you. And the photo goes to Claude, not to Intellist: the connector receives the item names Claude writes, not the picture. If you want a photo attached to an item for an insurance or damage claim, add it in the app.

The same routine works for storage bins long after a move. Pull the lid off a garage bin, take a photo, “add this to Garage bin 3.” The full NFC side of it is in NFC tags for storage bins and how to label and track every moving box with NFC tags.

Once your bins have lists, Claude can search all of them at once. This is the question an inventory exists to answer, and it’s nice to be able to ask it in a sentence:

• “Which bin is the camping lantern in?”
• “Do I already have a USB-C to HDMI adapter somewhere?”
• “What’s in the boxes marked Office?”

If two lists or items share a name, Claude asks which one you mean instead of guessing. Tapping an NFC tag is still faster when you’re standing in front of the bin. Asking Claude is faster when you’re not, like when you’re at the store wondering if you own the thing already.

Inventory lists in Intellist have quantities, and they’re only useful if they stay true. The connector lets you update a count in the middle of whatever you were already doing in Claude:

• “I used two AA batteries. Update the count in my garage inventory.”
• “We’re down to one pack of paper towels.”
• “I added three cans of tomatoes to the pantry.”

One catch: Intellist automations run on your phone, so they don’t fire on changes made through Claude. If you have an automation that adds paper towels to the shopping list when the count gets low, change that count in the app for it to trigger.

Plenty of apps can turn a recipe into a shopping list. What they can’t do is skip the things you already have, because they don’t know what you have. If you keep a pantry inventory in Intellist, Claude can check it.

Send Claude a recipe link (or paste the recipe) and ask: “What am I missing for this from my Pantry list? Add those to my shopping list.” Claude reads the ingredients, looks at your pantry, and adds only the gaps. The olive oil and rice you already have stay off the list.

This works as well as your pantry list is current, which is the argument for keeping it in an app you can update in a sentence. My guide to organizing your home with NFC tags covers setting up pantry and freezer lists in the first place.

You need two things: an Intellist account (created in the iPhone app) and Claude.

1. Open the Intellist listing in Claude’s connector directory and add it. You can also add it as a custom connector with the URL https://intellist.app/api/mcp.
2. Select Connect and sign in on intellist.app with the same account you use in the app (Apple, Google, or email), then choose Allow.
3. Ask Claude something about your lists, like “What lists do I have in Intellist?”

The exact steps for each version of Claude, including Team plans and Claude Code, are on the Intellist connector page.

If you use ChatGPT instead, the same requests work there too. Open the Intellist plugin in ChatGPT’s plugin directory, connect it, and sign in the same way.

The connector only sees lists synced to your account. If you’ve been using Intellist without signing in, your lists live only on your phone, and Claude can’t see them until you sign in and they sync.

I’d rather you know the edges before you hit them:

• It can’t delete lists or items. That’s deliberate. The one exception is a list set to “Delete items when checked”: checking an item there moves it to Trash, as it does in the app, and you can restore it.
• Photos, item values, and NFC tags stay in the app. Claude can’t attach a photo to an item, set a dollar value, or write a tag.
• Automations, actions, and groups stay in the app. Automations also don’t fire on changes Claude makes.
• Changes arrive at the next sync, not instantly.
• The free list limit applies. Intellist Free includes 3 lists, whether you create them in the app or through Claude. A whole-house move will need Intellist Pro.

An inventory is only worth having if it gets made, and the typing is what stops most of them. With the Intellist connector, Claude does the typing: a photo of a box becomes its list, a sentence updates a count, and “which bin is it in?” gets an answer from every list at once. The lists stay yours, in the Intellist app, with NFC tags so a tap on the box shows what’s inside.

• Download Intellist free on the App Store, then add Intellist in Claude