Claude Desktop Model Context Protocol Setup

Guide being followed: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart

Step One

Download the Claude desktop app: https://claude.ai/download

Step Two (Installing Prerequisites)

You may install uw, git and sqlite.
You can skip sqlite if you do not need to connect to a database immediately.

For Mac Os

# Using Homebrew
brew install uv git sqlite3

# Or download directly:
# uv: https://docs.astral.sh/uv/
# Git: https://git-scm.com
# SQLite: https://www.sqlite.org/download.html

For Windows

# Using winget
winget install --id=astral-sh.uv -e
winget install git.git sqlite.sqlite

# Or download directly:
# uv: https://docs.astral.sh/uv/
# Git: https://git-scm.com
# SQLite: https://www.sqlite.org/download.html

Step Three (Configure Claude Desktop)

Open your Claude Desktop App configuration at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json in a text editor.

For example, if you have VS Code installed:

code ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Alternatively on Mac Os, you can click “Claude” in the menu bar and select “Settings”.

Then you want to select “Developer” and in the right panel and click “Edit Config”.

For this article we shall focus on a few capabilities. Feel free to add more from the MCP Github Examples: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers
You may also code your own server (what I called capabilities). That is a discussion for another blog.

Add this configuration (replace BRAVE_API_KEY, PERSONAL_TOKEN and “/Users/user/Documents/” with your Brave Search API Key, GitHub personal token and actual file path, respectively ):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "filesystem": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/Users/user/Documents/"]
        },
        "brave-search": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search"
            ],
            "env": {
                "BRAVE_API_KEY": "BRAVE_API_KEY"
            }
        },
        "memory": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory"
            ]
        },
        "git": {
            "command": "python",
            "args": ["-m", "mcp_server_git", "--repository", "/Users/user/Documents/"]
        },
        "puppeteer": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer"]
        },
        "github": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
            "-y",
            "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"
            ],
            "env": {
            "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "PERSONAL_TOKEN"
            }
        }
    }
}

This configuration adds internet search, memory, git access, web-scraping and GitHub access to Claude. Restart the desktop application (very important) and test out each of the servers.