How to Setup MCP?

Before writing any server code, get your environment right. This takes about 10 minutes.

What you need

• Node.js 18+ — check with node --version. If you're under 18, update at nodejs.org.
• Claude Desktop — download at claude.ai/download if you haven't.
• A code editor — VS Code works fine.

# Verify node version
node --version
# Should output v18.x.x or higher

# Verify npm
npm --version

Create your project

mkdir my-mcp-server
cd my-mcp-server
npm init -y

Install the MCP SDK

npm install @modelcontextprotocol/sdk zod
npm install -D typescript @types/node tsx

What each package does:

• @modelcontextprotocol/sdk — the official MCP SDK from Anthropic
• zod — schema validation (the SDK uses it for defining tool inputs)
• typescript + @types/node — TypeScript support
• tsx — runs TypeScript files directly without a build step (huge quality of life improvement)

Configure TypeScript

Create a tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "ES2022",
    "module": "Node16",
    "moduleResolution": "Node16",
    "outDir": "./build",
    "rootDir": "./src",
    "strict": true
  }
}

Update package.json to add a build script and set the module type:

{
  "type": "module",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "tsc",
    "dev": "tsx src/index.ts"
  }
}

Find your Claude Desktop config file

Claude Desktop reads a config file to know which MCP servers to load. You'll need this in Module 2.

Mac:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Windows:

%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

If the file doesn't exist yet, create it. If it exists but is empty, that's fine too.

# Mac: open the config directory
open ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/

# Windows (PowerShell)
explorer $env:APPDATA\Claude\

Your folder structure should now look like:

my-mcp-server/
├── src/
│   └── index.ts     ← your server goes here
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

Environment's ready. Time to write the actual server.