A setup guide and troubleshooting helper for MCP servers. MCP servers are programs that let an AI assistant use additional tools or services.

Use it when adding Python or remote MCP servers, choosing project, local, or user settings, and checking server commands before registration.

It helps avoid installing the wrong package, hanging during checks, choosing the wrong connection type, or placing server settings in the wrong scope.

mcp-setup — Skill for Claude Code by AxGord: A setup guide and troubleshooting helper for MCP servers.

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/axgord/claude-workflow/mcp-setup

Any agent

npx skills add AxGord/claude-workflow --skill mcp-setup

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AxGord/claude-workflow

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install workflow, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 28 skills, 2 hooks, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/axgord/claude-workflow/mcp-setup.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/axgord/claude-workflow/mcp-setup)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/axgord/claude-workflow/mcp-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/axgord/claude-workflow/mcp-setup.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 11 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 562 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00011	$0.00562
Opus 5	$0.00005	$0.00281
Sonnet 5	$0.00002	$0.00112
Haiku 4.5	$0.00001	$0.00056

Measured 6d ago against content hash 2284f8ce67ef, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mcp-setup scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

templates/skills/mcp-setup/SKILL.md · 31 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 31 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Rules

NEVER guess package names → npm info <name> to verify before installing
Validate before adding → npm info → npx -y <pkg> --help → claude mcp add. Caveat: many MCP servers don't implement --help and just wait on stdio — wrap validation in timeout 10 … so it can't hang.
Think UX upfront → headless mode, timeouts, flags — ask user BEFORE installing
Restarts: /mcp can reconnect already-registered servers, but registering a NEW server requires a session restart. Get the config right the first time.

Quick Facts

Python servers: claude mcp add <name> -- uvx <pkg> — uvx launches PyPI packages over stdio, no venv management.
Remote servers: claude mcp add --transport http <name> <url> (also --transport sse for legacy SSE servers).
Scopes: project scope lives in .mcp.json at the repo root (checked in); local scope lives in ~/.claude.json under that project's entry (NOT in the repo); user scope is global in ~/.claude.json.
Plugin-bundled servers get tool names mcp__plugin_<plugin>_<server>__<tool> — the full name must stay under the 64-char API limit, so keep plugin/server names short.

Troubleshooting

claude mcp list for status
Run command manually to see error
npm whoami — fix stale token if needed
npm info <pkg> deprecated — check if abandoned

Browser MCP (playwright/chrome-devtools)

"Browser is already in use … use --isolated" = the persistent Chrome profile (~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright-mcp/mcp-chrome-* on macOS, ~/.cache/ms-playwright-mcp/mcp-chrome-* on Linux) is locked by a stale SingletonLock symlink (often pointing at an unrelated regular Chrome pid). The MCP server refuses even after browser_close.
Fix without killing the user's Chrome: if more than one browser MCP server is configured, each has its own profile — switch to the other server rather than killing the pid the lock points at (it may be the user's real browser). Stay with ONE browser server per session; alternating between two hits the lock again.

Read the full file on GitHub · 31 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

6d ago First seen · 31 lines · 11 tokens per session scan A 2284f8ce67ef

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mcp-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository AxGord/claude-workflow (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 11 tokens to every session and 562 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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