MCP Starter

🚀 MCP Starter Server

A minimal Model Context Protocol server template for building AI assistant tools. This starter provides a basic structure to create MCP tools compatible with AI assistants like Claude.

🚀 Quick Start

This MCP starter server is designed to help you quickly build AI assistant tools. It provides a basic structure and pre - configured development tools, making it easy to create MCP tools compatible with AI assistants such as Claude.

✨ Features

• A simple "Hello, World" tool example.
• TypeScript + esbuild setup.
• Pre - configured development tools.

📦 Installation

Set up to build and run with Claude

1. Download and install the Claude Desktop app.

2. Clone the repository, install dependencies, and build:

npm install
npm run build

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

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

This will add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

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

If you already have other MCP servers, add the mcp-starter block to your existing configuration. Importantly, args should be the path /path_to_repo_on_your_machine/mcp-starter/dist/index.cjs.

4. Restart the Claude Desktop app.

5. Look for the hammer icon in Claude's interface and confirm that the server is running correctly.

6. If everything is working, you can use npm run dev for development and test in Claude. You need to restart Claude every time you need to restart the MCP server.

Development with the Inspector

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:

npm run inspect

Build on file changes:

npm run watch

Or run the watcher and inspector simultaneously:

npm run dev

Publishing

Once you're ready to distribute the server, the steps are straightforward!

1. Set up an NPM account.

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

3. Once published, others can install your server via a configuration entry:

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

💻 Usage Examples

Available Tools

The server provides the following tools:

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

Creating New Tools

To add a new tool:

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

Refer to the implementation of hello_tool as an example.