As the title says, I have an API that supports api keys, but I haven't implemented OAuth flow. I want to expose some of it as MCP tools through an remote MCP server (not a local one installed via node). I want this server to be accessible through Claude Desktop. Is that doable at all? It seems like the only supported way for remote servers is through OAuth flow, if I want to use copied api token directly, I need to go with some local setup e.g. node installation or docker container. Any thoughts?

Just saw this update and had to share, Claude Code can now connect directly to remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, which is a game changer for developers using cc.

What this means:

• Zero local configuration.. pull context from your tools straight into Claude Code

• Direct integration.. with external services and APIs

• Streamlined workflow.. for developers working with multiple tools and data sources

This basically eliminates the friction of setting up local MCP servers just to get Claude Code to work with your existing toolchain. You can now connect to remote servers and pull in context from databases, APIs, documentation systems, and more without any local setup hassle.

For anyone who's been using Claude Code for development work, you know how powerful it can be.

Perfect for:

• Pulling live data from APIs

• Accessing remote documentation

• Integrating with cloud services

• Working with team-shared resources

More details on Anthropic's site: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-code-remote-mcp

Hi,

I am trying to build remote mcps for my projects and I _cant_ get it to work. I've gotten it to work in MCP inspector many times. No warnings, auth works perfectly etc. However as soon as I add the SSE url in claude desktop it refuses to acknowledge the MCP, only error I get is that there is no auth window being shown and no requests seems to be made to the MCP server. The output logs only say MCP error -32000 which seems to be un-googable.

To debug this I've tried mimicing the header/server behavior of paypal/atlassian, set up a proper ssl cert, pointed a external hostname to my service etc, nothing helps. My MCP console still sees no connection tries from anthropic or claude desktop, at all. When I do it in MCP Inspector I see all the OAuth requests.

Anyone have a good pointer to how to get this to work? I have a max subscription and have tested building using both python and typescript.

I also tried adding it from the claude.ai interface which only gives me a error that the "auth process is not working", but no requests are made to my server (which at this point is a external hostname with a working cert, however NOT using port 443). I have tried googling this to death but I cannot find any reference that remote mcps only work on port 443 (and it would be kinda nice by mcp inspector to warn about that if that was the case...).