claude-desktop

🧠 Learning Lesson: Getting Started with MCP Using Claude Desktop

🚀 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:

• Set up Claude Desktop as an MCP Client
• Connect Claude Desktop to local and cloud-based MCP Servers
• Use claude_desktop_config.json configuration
• Will take approximately 15 minutes

🖥️ Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is an application for general public to interact with AI via UI with built-in LLM support and native MCP Client functionality. It supports:

• STDIO transport protocol only
• A dedicated claude_desktop_config.json configuration
• Direct integration with popular local MCP servers

Other supported developer-oriented MCP clients include: Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code with Copilot, Cline, Continue (vary in transport & config support).

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How to Set Up MCP with Claude Desktop

1. Install Claude Desktop

Go to Claude Desktop and install the app for your OS.

2. Local MCP Servers Requirements

In the previous guide you prepared by installing these utils, if you didn't, follow the previous step in README.md:

• With uv, npm, pip, node, docker
• Desktop Extensions (DXT)
• Standalone Containers (may support STDIO, SSE or even Streamable-HTTP)
• Via MCP Toolkit from Docker Desktop extension (supports STDIO protocol only)

3 Cloud MCP Servers

Some online services have native MCP support (e.g. GitHub, Cloudflare). But Claude Desktop does not support those, fortunately we can use MCP Proxy such as mcp-remote to fix that issue.

• https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp/ (streamable-HTTP only, requires Authentication, read more)
• https://docs.mcp.cloudflare.com/sse (SSE transport only, no Auth), see other Cloudflare's own MCP servers here.
• https://mcp.deepwiki.com/sse (SSE transport only, no Auth)

4. ⚙️ Claude Desktop UI

• Open Claude Desktop
• In the Settings go to "Developer" tab
• Press edit config and open the claude_desktop_config.json with any text editor.
• Observe the syntax of claude_desktop_config.json file.
• Replace the text with the text from mcpServers.json and replace DeepWiki per example below using a proxy like this:

Replace this fragment:

    "DeepWiki": {
      "disabled": false,
      "timeout": 15,
      "url": "https://mcp.deepwiki.com/sse",
      "transportType": "sse"
    }

With this, using mcp-remote proxy:

    "DeepWiki": {
      "timeout": 60,
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.deepwiki.com/sse"
      ],
      "disabled": false
    }

Close and reopen Claude Desktop to restart.