The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Claude Chat listing page.
An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the Anthropic Claude Messages API. Built in Rust, it exposes chat, vision, live web search, and model listing as MCP tools — so any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.) can consult Claude as a tool.
Communicates via stdio using JSON-RPC 2.0, like all the other MCP servers in this collection. Structurally it mirrors mcp-server-grok-chat / mcp-server-gpt-chat, adapted to Anthropic's API shape.
This server uses the Anthropic API with an API key (API credits). That is the only supported, terms-compliant way to drive Claude from a third-party tool.
A Claude Pro/Max subscription (the kind that powers Claude Code and the Claude apps) is not usable here: that authentication is licensed for Anthropic's own first-party clients, and routing it through a custom server would violate Anthropic's Consumer Terms — the "$200 of Claude usage from another service" concern you raised. So: API key it is. (If you run an Anthropic-compatible gateway, point base_url at it — see Configuration.)
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
chat | Send a message to Claude. Supports multi-turn history, a system prompt, model selection, and extended thinking via thinking_budget. |
chat_with_vision | Analyse an image given an image URL and a text prompt. |
chat_with_search | Chat with live web search — Claude searches server-side and answers with cited sources. |
list_models | List available Claude models and their IDs (cached for 5 minutes). |
Note: Anthropic has no embeddings endpoint (they recommend Voyage AI), so unlike the grok/gpt servers there is no
embeddingtool.
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
prompt | string | yes | The user message to send |
system_prompt | string | no | System prompt to set context/behaviour |
messages | string | no | Conversation history as a JSON array of {role, content} objects (roles: user/assistant only — use system_prompt for system instructions) |
model | string | no | Model ID (default: server default, claude-opus-4-8). Call list_models. |
temperature | float | no | Sampling temperature (0.0–1.0). Ignored when thinking_budget is set. |
max_tokens | integer | no | Max tokens to generate (defaults to the server default) |
thinking_budget | integer | no | Enable extended thinking with this token budget (min 1024). Reasoning is returned in a [thinking] block; max_tokens is auto-raised above the budget. |
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
prompt | string | yes | Text prompt describing what to analyse |
image_url | string | yes | URL of the image (must be http:// or https://) |
model | string | no | Vision-capable model ID (default: server default) |
temperature | float | no | Sampling temperature (0.0–1.0) |
max_tokens | integer | no | Max tokens to generate |
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
prompt | string | yes | The user message |
system_prompt | string | no | System prompt |
model | string | no | Model ID (default: server default) |
temperature | float | no | Sampling temperature (0.0–1.0) |
max_tokens | integer | no | Max tokens to generate |
max_uses | integer | no | Max web searches Claude may run for this request (default: 5) |
Web search is billed by Anthropic at $10 per 1,000 searches on top of token costs, and an org admin must enable web search in the Claude Console.
No parameters. Results cached for 5 minutes.
Config (~/.config/mcp-server-claude-chat/config.toml):
The server fails fast at startup if the config is missing or api_key is empty.
Claude Desktop (~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json) or any MCP client:
Claude Code:
MIT