What is Remote Mcp Server

The remote-mcp-server is a cloud-based server that operates on Cloudflare Workers, designed to facilitate remote access and interaction with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs, complete with OAuth login functionality.

Use cases

Use cases include developing and testing applications that interact with MCP APIs, utilizing the MCP Inspector for debugging and exploration, and integrating with AI platforms like Claude for enhanced user interaction.

How to use

To use the remote-mcp-server, clone the repository, install the necessary dependencies, and run the server locally. Connect the MCP inspector to the server using the provided URL and follow the login prompts to access the defined tools.

Key features

Key features include OAuth login support, easy local development setup, integration with MCP Inspector for API exploration, and the ability to connect with Claude Desktop for enhanced functionality.

Where to use

The remote-mcp-server can be utilized in various fields such as software development, API testing, and integration with AI tools, particularly in environments that require remote access to MCP APIs.

Remote MCP Server on Cloudflare

Let’s get a remote MCP server up-and-running on Cloudflare Workers complete with OAuth login!

Develop locally

# clone the repository
git clone [email protected]:cloudflare/ai.git

# install dependencies
cd ai
npm install

# run locally
npx nx dev remote-mcp-server

You should be able to open http://localhost:8787/ in your browser

Connect the MCP inspector to your server

To explore your new MCP api, you can use the MCP Inspector.

• Start it with npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
• Within the inspector, switch the Transport Type to SSE and enter http://localhost:8787/sse as the URL of the MCP server to connect to, and click “Connect”
• You will navigate to a (mock) user/password login screen. Input any email and pass to login.
• You should be redirected back to the MCP Inspector and you can now list and call any defined tools!

Connect Claude Desktop to your local MCP server

The MCP inspector is great, but we really want to connect this to Claude! Follow Anthropic’s Quickstart and within Claude Desktop go to Settings > Developer > Edit Config to find your configuration file.

Open the file in your text editor and replace it with this configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "math": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8787/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

This will run a local proxy and let Claude talk to your MCP server over HTTP

When you open Claude a browser window should open and allow you to login. You should see the tools available in the bottom right. Given the right prompt Claude should ask to call the tool.

Deploy to Cloudflare

1. npx wrangler kv namespace create OAUTH_KV
2. Follow the guidance to add the kv namespace ID to wrangler.jsonc
3. npm run deploy

Call your newly deployed remote MCP server from a remote MCP client

Just like you did above in “Develop locally”, run the MCP inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector@latest

Then enter the workers.dev URL (ex: worker-name.account-name.workers.dev/sse) of your Worker in the inspector as the URL of the MCP server to connect to, and click “Connect”.

You’ve now connected to your MCP server from a remote MCP client.

Connect Claude Desktop to your remote MCP server

Update the Claude configuration file to point to your workers.dev URL (ex: worker-name.account-name.workers.dev/sse) and restart Claude

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "math": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://worker-name.account-name.workers.dev/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Debugging

Should anything go wrong it can be helpful to restart Claude, or to try connecting directly to your
MCP server on the command line with the following command.

npx mcp-remote http://localhost:8787/sse

In some rare cases it may help to clear the files added to ~/.mcp-auth

rm -rf ~/.mcp-auth