Claude Desktop

Host set up for Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is Anthropic's AI-powered assistant for macOS and Windows. It is designed to help you work conversationally across all kinds of tasks — from writing and brainstorming to coding and automation.

Getting started

First download and install the Claude.ai desktop app.

To edit the MCP settings, go to Settings → Developer → Edit Config.

MCP Panel

Open the JSON configuration file in your preferred text editor and add the following snippet.

{
  "mcpServers": 
  {
    "umbraco-mcp": 
    {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@umbraco-cms/mcp-dev@beta"],
      "env": 
      {
        "NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED": "0",
        "UMBRACO_CLIENT_ID": "umbraco-back-office-mcp",
        "UMBRACO_CLIENT_SECRET": "1234567890",
        "UMBRACO_BASE_URL": "https://localhost:12345",
        "UMBRACO_INCLUDE_TOOL_COLLECTIONS": "document,media,document-type,data-type"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace the UMBRACO_CLIENT_ID, UMBRACO_CLIENT_SECRET, and UMBRACO_BASE_URL values with your local connection details.

Restart Claude to activate the new configuration.

If you encounter a connection error, open the logs and review the file named mcp-server-umbraco-mcp.log. This file contains details on how to resolve the issue.

A paid version of Claude.ai will have a higher token limit and will be able to run more complex prompts.

From here, you should choose which tools or tool collections you want to enable for your first task. You will need to restart Claude Desktop every time you make a change to the tools you are using.

Node version mismatch

Occasionally, Claude Desktop may choose to use the wrong version of Node.js when running the MCP Server. A minimum of Node.js version 22 is required. This issue most commonly occurs when using a Node.js version manager such as nvm. Claude Desktop can sometimes default to the lowest installed version rather than the active one set by nvm.

The only reliable fix for this is to remove all older Node.js versions, leaving only version 22 or higher installed. This behaviour appears to be specific to Claude Desktop and does not affect any other AI hosts.