MCP Ts Quickstart

🚀 MCP Protocol Quick Start Guide (TypeScript Version)

This is a quick start example of MCP implemented in TypeScript. It includes a basic MCP server implementation based on the stdio transport protocol and fetches top stories from Hacker News. This implementation doesn't require a build step and can be directly run on Node.js v23. It is based on the example provided in the official MCP documentation.

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

The following code snippets require git, nvm, and pnpm.

git clone git@github.com:cephalization/mcp-ts-quickstart.git
cd mcp-ts-quickstart
nvm install && nvm use
pnpm install

Configuration

After cloning the repository and installing the dependencies, you can add this server to Claude Desktop. The configuration file should be similar to the following:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news": {
      "command": "/Users/tony/.nvm/versions/node/v23.6.0/bin/node",
      "args": ["/Users/tony/repos/mcp/src/index.ts"]
    }
  }
}

For detailed information on how to use Claude Desktop, please refer to the official MCP documentation.

💻 Usage Examples

Development

Run the following commands to install dependencies, start the MCP server, and use the MCP Inspector UI as the client:

nvm install && nvm use
pnpm install
pnpm start

Since the server doesn't require a build step, you can restart the server by clicking the "Restart" button in the inspector UI.

Extending the Server

The server implementation is located in the src/index.ts file, and the top stories tool implementation is in the src/tools.ts file.

To add a new tool, copy the top stories tool and make modifications.

When importing local source files, make sure to use the .ts extension so that Node can resolve them correctly.

When importing types, make sure to prefix them with the type keyword so that the Node runtime can strip them.

When importing libraries, make sure to import the actual file extension if the library doesn't provide an export map.

📚 Documentation

MCP Inspector

MCP Inspector is a UI for interacting with MCP servers. After running, it will be available at http://localhost:6274.