mcp-starter

A minimal ModelContextProtocol server template for building AI assistant tools. This starter provides a basic structure for creating MCP tools that can be used with AI assistants like Claude.

• Simple "hello world" tool example
• TypeScript + esbuild setup
• Development tools preconfigured

1. Download and install Claude desktop app from claude.ai/download

2. Clone the repo, install dependencies and build:

npm install
npm run build

3. Configure Claude to use this MCP server. If this is your first MCP server, in the root of this project run:

echo '{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-starter": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["'$PWD'/dist/index.cjs"]
    }
  }
}' > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

This should result in an entry in your claude_desktop_config.json like:

"mcpServers": {
  "mcp-starter": {
    "command": "node",
    "args": ["/Users/matt/code/mcp-starter/dist/index.cjs"]
  }
}

If you have existing MCP servers, add the mcp-starter block to your existing config. It's an important detail that the args is the path to <path_to_repo_on_your_machine>/mcp-starter/dist/index.cjs.

4. Restart Claude Desktop.

5. Look for the hammer icon with the number of available tools in Claude's interface to confirm the server is running.

6. If this is all working, you should be able to develop your MCP server using npm run dev and test it in Claude. You'll need to restart Claude each time to restart the MCP server.

For development and debugging purposes, you can use the MCP Inspector tool. The Inspector provides a visual interface for testing and monitoring MCP server interactions.

Visit the Inspector documentation for detailed setup instructions.

To test locally with Inspector:

npm run inspect

To build on file changes run:

npm run watch

Or run both the watcher and inspector:

npm run dev

Once you're ready to distribute your server, it's simple!

1. Set up an NPM account.

2. Run npm publish. This will publish a package using the project name in package.json

3. Once published, others can install the server with a config entry like:

"mcpServers": {
  "<your-package-name>": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["<your-package-name>"]
  }
}

The server provides:

• hello_tool: A simple example tool that takes a name parameter and returns a greeting

To add new tools:

1. Define the tool schema in index.ts
2. Add it to the tools array in the ListToolsRequestSchema handler
3. Add the implementation in the CallToolRequestSchema handler

See the hello_tool implementation as an example.