Pando vs Dynalist, if you want Claude to work in your outline
by Andreas Tissen · · updated
Dynalist is known for dates inside bullets, files and folders, and a free plan you can live in. Its pricing page, read on 14 November 2026, still offers that free plan with "Unlimited items & documents" and a sign-up button. Its changelog, which says it "only includes major features and changes", lists nothing since June 2020.
What it does not have is a way for Claude on your phone to reach the outline. This page compares Dynalist with Pando, which I build, for somebody who is fine in Dynalist but wants Claude to work in it.
How an agent could reach Dynalist
Agents reach apps over MCP, the protocol Claude and ChatGPT use. I found no official Dynalist MCP server on dynalist.io, in its API documentation or on its forum, and Claude's connector directory had no Dynalist entry on 14 November 2026. Dynalist does have a public API (its documentation is at apidocs.dynalist.io), with a token you create at dynalist.io/developer.
Community MCP servers sit on that API. The ones I found, such as JDNdeveloper/dynalist-mcp on GitHub, announced on Dynalist's forum, run on your own computer: its README says it "runs as a local subprocess of the MCP client", with no network listener. That works for Claude Code on the same machine. Claude on your phone and claude.ai connect from Anthropic's servers and cannot reach it. Which notes can Claude reach from your phone? has Dynalist's row next to 20 other note apps.
Compared row by row
| Pando | Dynalist | |
|---|---|---|
| Agent access | hosted MCP server, 12 tools, read and write or read only | public API; community MCP servers on your computer |
| Dates in bullets | a date in the text is a date; Calendar and Timeline show it | yes, with its own !(date) syntax |
| Files and folders | one outline; any branch is a page with its own address | documents in folders |
| Free plan | 5,000 bullets, every feature, no card | unlimited items and documents, 5 bookmarks |
| Paid | Pro, no bullet limit, 3 EUR a month | Pro $9.99 a month, or $7.99 a month billed yearly |
Where Dynalist wins
Dynalist's free plan has no item limit, and Pando's stops new bullets at 5,000. If your outline is large and you never want to pay, Dynalist is the better deal. Its Pro plan adds Google Calendar integration, version history, and a daily backup to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Pando has no version history. In its place it has a Trash, a Changes list of recent edits, and a nightly backup you can send to your own Dropbox or Google Drive. It reads a Google Calendar into the days of its own calendar, in one direction. And a tool whose changelog has been still since 2020 will not change under you next week either, which some people value more than new features.
What Pando adds
Pando's MCP server is hosted at https://pando.ink/mcp. You add it to Claude as a custom connector, approve it read and write or read only, and Claude gets a bullet called "Claude's memory" for what it should keep. Claude on the phone can then read and write the outline, and your computer can be off. Give your agent a memory shows what that memory holds after some use.
I also have the agent write tasks for me into a branch as checkboxes, each with the reason in the note, and I tick them. The inbox your agent writes for you is the long version.
Pando keeps one outline rather than folders of separate documents. It is run by my company, Pyfio UG, in Soltau, Germany.
How a Dynalist outline arrives
Dynalist's help page "Export list or document" offers OPML among its formats, and Pando reads OPML. In Pando, open the menu of the bullet you want the outline under, type "import", and choose "Import a file…". Pando shows the file, the number of bullets and where they will land before it writes anything.
Dynalist writes dates in its own syntax: its blog post announcing dates was titled "Announcing date support on !(2016-08-01)". I wrote a small OPML test file myself in that syntax, with a note, a tag, a completed item and a bold word; it is not an export from a real Dynalist account. Pando recognised both dates, including the time, and showed them as dates. The !( before them and the ) after stayed as characters.
If you want clean lines, replace !( and the closing bracket in the file before you import, or tidy them afterwards. Notes, completion, tags and bold came through. Moving into Pando lists what each kind of file keeps and what stays behind.
Who should stay on Dynalist
Stay if your system runs, your outline is larger than 5,000 items and you do not want to pay, or you rely on version history and calendar sync. Move, or keep a branch in Pando beside it, if you want Claude to work in your outline from anywhere.
Read on 14 November 2026: Dynalist's pricing page (dynalist.io/pricing), its changelog, its help page "Export list or document", its API documentation, its blog post "Announcing date support on !(2016-08-01)", and the README of JDNdeveloper/dynalist-mcp with its announcement on Dynalist's forum. Claude's connector directory had no Dynalist entry that day.
To give Claude an outline it can reach from your phone, create a free Pando account and connect Claude.