Make Claude Desktop a pair programming assistant by installing codemcp. With
it, you can directly ask Claude to implement features, fix bugs and do
refactors on a codebase on your computer; Claude will directly edit files and
run tests. Say goodbye to copying code in and out of Claude’s chat window!
codemcp offers similar functionality to other AI coding software (Claude Code,
Cursor, Cline, Aider), but it occupies a unique point in the design space:
-
It’s intended to be used with Claude Pro, Anthropic’s $20/mo subscription
offering. Say goodbye to giant API bills. (Say hello to time-based rate
limits.) -
It’s built around safe agentic AI by providing a limited set of tools
that helpful, honest and harmless LLMs are unlikely to misuse, and enforcing
best practices like use of Git version control to ensure all code changes
can be rolled back. As a result, you can safely unleash the AI and
only evaluate at the end if you want to accept the changes or not. -
It’s IDE agnostic: you ask Claude to make changes, it makes them, and
then you can use your favorite IDE setup to review the changes and make
further edits.
First, install uv
and install
git, if they
are not installed already (on Windows, if you installed Git, I recommend
rebooting).
Then, in claude_desktop_config.json:
“args”: [
“–from”,
“git+https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp@prod”,
“codemcp”
]
}
}
}” dir=”auto”>
{
"mcpServers": {
"codemcp": {
"command": "/Users//.local/bin/uvx" ,
"args": [
"--from",
"git+https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp@prod",
"codemcp"
]
}
}
}
On Windows, double backslashes are necessary for the path:
it “codemcp” will be visible.
Pro tip: If the server fails to load, go to Settings > Developer > codemcp >
Logs to look at the MCP logs, they’re very helpful for debugging.
Pro tip: if on Windows, the logs say “Git executable not found. Ensure that
Git is installed and available”, and you just installed Git, reboot your
machine (the PATH update hasn’t propagated.) If this still doesn’t work, open
System Properties > Environment Variables > System variables > Path and ensure
there is an entry for Git.
P
8 Comments
0xcb0
Hey there, excited first time user here.
Thanks for creating this!
I started playing around with it yesterday evening. Running Claude Desktop under manjaro linux with some tweaks, I did managed to activate codemcp.
As I am also quite new with mcp and how to proper use the protocol in tools, I am not sure I did everything correct. I did also install filesystem, git, github and sequential-thinking along side.
However, git will not work. The addition of the mcp git server might not be needed? But without it, it did also not work
However, what it has done so far is mind blowing. I did create a long query the other day about a project idea. This generated a road map, detailed implementation instruction, guidlines, all that is needed to complete the problem. I let it Claude Desktop read in the files with help of codemcp.
Claude Dekstop have been working for multiple hours before I seem to have hot some kind of limit. I now get the message to type continue, but it always start the with the same task.
And what it has been created is awesome. The frontend is nearly finished, but it lacked to create the startup code first.
Overall I am blow away what I can do with mcp and esp. with this small lib the author has created here. Code quality is good and event though I had multiple limits, where I needed to type continue, the code is logically make sense. Really good!
I also do not yet know how I can continue a old session.
P.S.
@anthropic, If you are reading this. I really do not want to abuse your service. Please, instead of giving me no answer, or beeing stuck in an infinite loop, give me a proper return code and a error, that I reached my limit for the next X minutes or so. I would really love this
dang
Related ongoing thread:
Hacking Your Own AI Coding Assistant with Claude Pro and MCP – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410866
rahimnathwani
I've been using it for the past hour or so.
I told it to make a TODO list (based on my instructions) and now I'm just repeatedly creating a new chat just saying 'work on the todo list'. The thing I'm giving it to do is pretty easy (fix some React components to add types and replace hardcoded strings with props). Doing the same thing in Cursor was annoying, due to the chatter, and the fact I had to click 'Accept all'.
For single file changes, it's nice. I haven't tried it with more complex things yet.
Seanambers
Why are people not using plugins like Cline?!
devit
This requires an MCP-compliant client, for which Claude Desktop seems to be the main (or only?) choice.
Note that Claude Desktop can be run on Linux using https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian, which repackages the Windows version to run on Linux (it's an Electron app, so it just needs to stub out the native interface, which seems mostly for cosmetic things).
It would be really nice though if the web versions of Claude, ChatGPT, etc. added MCP support directly: this should be achievable with help from a WebExtension and a native binary to proxy messages from the WebExtension to the MCP server.
It should also be possible to write such a WebExtension by a third-party (that injects messages in the conversation), although it's possible the LLM companies might block it.
ezyang
When I posted this to Reddit there was a pretty lively discussion there: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/s/wRmnREUWzn
siliconc0w
It'd be really nice if the AI providers just discounted API tokens against your subscriptions so they were in-effect just pre-paying for (ideally a discounted) set amount of tokens.
trash_cat
I am using Windsurf and consistently running low Flex credits and was looking into MCP for local file editing.
Would be interested in hearing what you learned creating Codemcp, how you find MCP as a protocol, and something else that you found interesting doing your project.