MCP: Merry Christmas Protocol? No, it's Anthropic's Model Context Protocol!
How to use Claude to control your computer!
As the festive season is upon us, we've received a pretty cool gift from Anthropic: the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is an open-source protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to large language models (LLMs), allowing them to interact with the real world, like accessing your local files and data.
MCP lets you build workflows and agents with a growing list of pre-built integrations that your LLM can plug right into. This includes switching between different LLM providers and vendors, all while ensuring your data remains secure within your own infrastructure. It's like giving your LLM access to a toolbox, which is a pretty magical thing.
MCP Core Architecture
For the coding nerds among us, MCP's architecture is built around a client-server model, and a JSON-RPC based communication system operating via standard input/output.
Host Layer: The entry point for AI interactions, typically running Claude or another LLM through an IDE or desktop application
Client Layer: maintains 1:1 connections with servers, inside the host application
Server Layer: A process-level implementation handling resource connections and tool execution. Each MCP server is implemented with either the Typescript MCP SDK or Python MCP SDK.
In simpler terms, the host application (like Claude Desktop) will ask the server to perform a task using some tool. The tool could be Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, MySQL, Playwright (among many others!). The server dutifully completes the task. The model can conduct search queries, select appropriate tools, and determine what information to retain. The server executes those tools.
Check out Anthropic’s H1 2025 roadmap to see what other functionality is coming up.
Step-by-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, we'll be using the Claude Desktop app and some of its pre-built servers. We assume you have some experience with running commands in your terminal. If you're a bit rusty, don't fret—check out this quickstart tutorial for setting up Claude Desktop without a terminal.
Setup (MacOS)
This tutorial focuses on the "path of least resistance" to get you up and running with MCP. Get ready to paste a few commands into your MacOS Terminal application (or your terminal of choice). While we won't be using a sandboxed environment like Docker for brevity here, we strongly recommend that you use one in your own production environment.
Install the Claude Desktop App
First, download and install the Claude Desktop app from the official website: https://claude.ai/download.
Log in to Your Account
Run this in your terminal to add a configuration file that enables the pre-built file-system integration. It will also create a `claude` directory in your home directory that Claude will have access to (this is the only directory it can interact with, unless you add more):
mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude ~/claude && echo '{
"mcpServers": {
"filesystem": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
"'$HOME'/claude"
]
}
}
}' > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Restart the Claude Desktop App. You should now see the File System tool enabled in the UI!
That’s it! If you run into any issues, the docs have a Troubleshooting section for debugging tips.
Let the Magic Begin: Prompting Your LLM
Now that we've set everything up, let's get to the fun part: prompting Claude! Here are some ideas to get you started:
Can you write a Christmas poem and save it to my desktop?
Can you find the “Red Ryder BB Gun” receipt on my desktop?
Can you take all the Holiday card images on my desktop and move them to a new folder called 'Holiday Card 2024'?
Next Steps: Explore other tools
Don't forget to explore the other pre-built servers in the repository’s README for other tools your LLM can access. If you build something cool, definitely let us know!
Happy coding, happy prompting, and happy holidays 🎄
Learn more about LOGIC, Inc. at https://logic.inc