Harnessing the Power of MCP: A Tutorial

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⚡🤖 MCP is one of the protocols to watch. 👀 It makes models like Anthropic's Claude more powerful by connecting them to external services, such as GitHub, Gmail, Research and data APIs, files on your system, etc. But how do you get started? With our free tutorial! ⤵️🧵

We created this step-by-step tutorial for creating a custom MCP server using the official TypeScript SDK. You can use the same approach to wire up any API you want so that Claude Desktop can take action on your behalf while you're chatting. We cover.. workos.com/blog/getting-started-with-claude-desktop-and-custom-mcp-servers-using-the-typescript-sdk

1. Project Setup

2. Implementing the MCP Server using the official TypeScript SDK This is an excellent introduction to MCP concepts: • Servers • Tools • Transports

3. Connecting Claude Desktop You define MCP servers using JSON in your central Claude configuration JSON - for the ultimate flexibility. You can choose how Claude launches each server and with which arguments.

4. Usage and troubleshooting Learn what the different Claude Desktop icons mean with regards to registered MCP tools as well as: • The MCP Lifecycle - how everything fits together • Common issues and how to fix them

This is the same pattern you can use to connect Claude Desktop or Claude Code to any API you want - whether they already have an official MCP plugin! workos.com/blog/getting-started-with-claude-desktop-and-custom-mcp-servers-using-the-typescript-sdk