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Difficulty: Intermediate • Time: 30 minutes • Tools: Claude Code, MCP

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Your AI assistant is smart but isolated. It can reason about code, refactor a module, and explain a stack trace — but it can't check your production database, query your project management API, or look up a customer record. Everything outside the local filesystem is a wall.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) removes that wall. It's an open standard that lets you connect Claude Code to external tools and services through a simple server pattern, and once you've set up your first connection, Claude stops being limited to what's on your local disk.

By the end of this guide, you'll have at least one MCP server running, connected to Claude Code, and usable in your normal workflow.

The starter config

Copy this into ~/.claude/settings.json (or merge with your existing config). Replace paths and tokens with your own.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@anthropic/mcp-server-filesystem",
        "/Users/you/Documents",
        "/Users/you/Downloads"
      ]
    },
    "github": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-server-github"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "ghp_your_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code after editing. MCP servers load at session start.

What you'll need

• Claude Code — installed and working. If you haven't set it up yet, follow Anthropic's installation guide.
• Node.js 18+ — most MCP servers are Node packages. Check with node --version.
• A service to connect — a database, an API, a SaaS tool, even just extended filesystem access. You need a reason, not just the protocol.

How MCP works (the 60-second version)

MCP servers are small programs that sit between Claude and an external service. They expose tools (actions Claude can take), resources (data Claude can read), and prompts (pre-built instructions) through a standardised interface.

When Claude Code starts, it loads your configured MCP servers and treats their tools the same way it treats its built-in tools like Bash, Read, and Edit. If you've connected a GitHub server, Claude can create issues. If you've connected a database server, Claude can run queries. The AI doesn't need special instructions — it sees the available tools and uses them when relevant.

There are two transport types:

• stdio — the server runs as a local process. Claude communicates with it through standard input/output. This is what you'll use for most setups.
• SSE — the server runs remotely and communicates over HTTP. Useful for shared team servers or cloud-hosted services.