Set up a Claude Desktop MCP client

This is for:

Developer System Administrator
In this article

This article describes how to set up a Claude Desktop MCP client to connect to your Coveo Hosted MCP Server. Once the MCP client is set up, you can start a chat session in Claude Desktop and quickly benefit from the tools available in your Hosted MCP Server.

Tip

Claude Desktop Free plan only supports local (stdio) MCP servers. To connect to the Hosted MCP Server, use the mcp-remote npm package. This allows Claude Desktop to start the node server locally and proxy call the remote server.

Prerequisites

Procedure

To set up a Claude Desktop MCP client

  1. In Claude Desktop, go to Settings > Developer > Edit Config.

  2. Add the following code snippet to the JSON configuration file:

    {
    "mcpServers": {
        "coveo": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "<MCP_SERVER_ENDPOINT>",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: ${AUTH_TOKEN}"
            ],
            "env": {
                "AUTH_TOKEN": "Bearer <API_KEY>"
            }
        }
    }
}

    Where:

    • <MCP_SERVER_ENDPOINT> is the endpoint of your Hosted MCP Server configuration.

    • <API_KEY> is the API key of your Hosted MCP Server configuration.

  3. Save the JSON configuration file to apply your changes.

  4. Restart Claude Desktop to apply your changes.

    The Local MCP servers window now displays your Hosted MCP Server configuration.

  5. Start a new chat session in Claude Desktop to leverage your Hosted MCP Server tools.