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.

The examples below use the Developer MCP package (@umbraco-cms/mcp-dev). Replace the package name if you are using a different Umbraco MCP server.

Match the package version to your Umbraco site. The examples on this page use @latest, which installs the newest release of the MCP Server. This may be a later major version than the one your site runs.

If your site is on the current Long-Term Support (LTS) release, Umbraco 17, use the @lts-17 tag instead, for example @umbraco-cms/mcp-dev@lts-17. A version mismatch causes the first tool request to fail.

See Version Compatibility for the full list of tags.

Getting started

1. Download and install the Claude.ai desktop app.
2. Go to Settings → Developer → Edit Config to edit the MCP settings,.

MCP Panel

1. Open the JSON configuration file in your preferred text editor.
2. Add the following snippet.

{
  "mcpServers": 
  {
    "umbraco-mcp": 
    {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@umbraco-cms/mcp-dev@latest"],
      "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"
      }
    }
  }
}

1. Replace the UMBRACO_CLIENT_ID, UMBRACO_CLIENT_SECRET, and UMBRACO_BASE_URL values with your local connection details.
2. Restart Claude to activate the new configuration.
3. Open the logs and review the mcp-server-umbraco-mcp.log file if you encounter a connection error. This file contains details on how to resolve the issue.

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

1. Choose the tools or tool collections to enable 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.

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