Connect an MCP server to Claude Desktop in 30 seconds

What you need

• A published MCP server in the registry — for example, amitte/registry-tools.
• Claude Desktop installed (works on Mac and Windows).

Step 1 — get the snippet

Open the MCP server's detail page and switch to the Connect tab. Pick Claude Desktop from the client dropdown. The page shows you the JSON snippet you need:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "registry-tools": {
      "url": "https://mcp.amitte.com/amitte/registry-tools"
    }
  }
}

Step 2 — paste it in

Open ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on Mac (or the Windows equivalent). If mcpServers is already there, add the new key inside the existing object.

Save the file and restart Claude Desktop. The next conversation shows the new tools in the tool tray — you should see things like search_skills and fetch_skill ready to invoke.

Same pattern works for Cursor and VS Code

The Connect tab also generates Cursor and VS Code snippets — pick your client from the dropdown. The proxy URL stays the same; only the config-file destination changes.

Health checks

The detail page shows a small green/red dot next to the proxy URL. Green means the upstream MCP responded to a probe within the last five minutes. If you see red, the MCP is offline; tools will time out. Don't wire to a red server.

Going further

Want to publish your own MCP server? Read the publish flow and the MCP proxy docs. The registry handles authentication, rate limiting, and graceful health degradation; you focus on the tools.