Claude Desktop is Anthropic's flagship desktop application for interacting with Claude. It was the first major AI app to support the Model Context Protocol, making it the reference implementation for MCP configuration. Claude Desktop uses a straightforward JSON config file with an mcpServers root key — the canonical format that most other apps are modeled on. Servers run as local stdio processes or connect to remote HTTP/SSE endpoints. Once a server is added to the config and Claude Desktop is restarted, Claude gains access to the server's tools and resources directly in the conversation. The getmcp CLI detects Claude Desktop automatically and merges servers into the existing config without overwriting your current settings.
The fastest way to install MCP servers in Claude Desktop is with the getmcp CLI:
npx @getmcp/cli add <server-id>Example configuration for the github server:
{
"mcpServers": {
"brave-search": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@brave/brave-search-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"BRAVE_API_KEY": ""
}
}
}
}