Honestly, title is the extent of the tip. It's not sexy or flashy, and I'm not here to push some MCP du jour or personal project. This is just a lesson I've learned multiple times now in my own use of Claude Code that I think is worth sharing.

If you're giving Claude a reference to use, and if it's conceivable that Claude will need to access that reference more than once, then spend 10 minutes and have Claude set up and optimize a local MCP server of that reference for Claude to use. Literally, just prompt Claude with, "Set up and optimize a local MCP server for X documentation that can be found at URL. Add the server information to the Claude config file at [filepath] and add instructions for using the server to [filepath]/CLAUDE.md"

That's it. That 10 minutes will pay dividends in tokens and time - even in the short term.

I've tried a number of web scraping MCP servers and the various "popular" MCP server projects that tend to pop up in this sub, and nothing really compares. Especially for complex searches or investigations, Claude - for lack of a better word - seems to get "bored" of looking/parsing/etc. if it takes too long and reverts to inferences. And inferences mean more time spent debugging.

But when there's a local MCP server running with that stuff all prepped and ready, Claude just zips through it all and finds what it needs significantly faster, far more accurately, with fewer distractions, and with seemingly more willingness to verify that it found the right thing.

Hope this helps!

After much trial and error I finally got functioning MCP servers in Claude Code albeit with slightly less will to live.

What are MCP Servers?

They're digital prosthetics that give Claude arms and legs to crawl around your computer with. Less poetically: extensions that let it do stuff beyond generating code you'll never actually use.

The Tools (★ = Requires API Key)

• Sequential Thinking: Helps Claude solve problems step‑by‑step

• Filesystem: Lets Claude rummage through the folders you allow

• Playwright: Modern multi‑browser automation

• Puppeteer: Chrome‑only (deprecated)

• Web Fetching: Grabs content from websites

• Browser Tools (Chrome DevTools Integration): Capture and analyze browser data through a Chrome extension

• ★ Brave Search: Web searching capabilities

• ★ Firecrawl: Advanced web scraping

🏃‍♂️ One‑Command Installation (The "I Don't Have Time For This" Version)

Copy everything in the block, paste into a macOS/Linux terminal, and hit ↵.

bash <<'EOF'
echo "🔧  Installing Claude MCP servers (latest versions)…"

# Sequential Thinking — Claude's chain‑of‑thought engine
claude mcp add sequential-thinking -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking || true

# Filesystem — give Claude access to local folders
claude mcp add filesystem -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem \
     ~/Documents ~/Desktop ~/Downloads ~/Projects || true

# Playwright — modern multi‑browser automation
claude mcp add playwright -s user \
  -- npx -y @playwright/mcp-server || true

# Puppeteer — Chrome‑only (deprecated but still works)
claude mcp add puppeteer -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer || true

# Fetch — simple HTTP GET/POST
claude mcp add fetch -s user \
  -- npx -y @kazuph/mcp-fetch || true

# Browser‑Tools — DevTools logs, screenshots, etc.
claude mcp add browser-tools -s user \
  -- npx -y @agentdeskai/browser-tools-mcp || true

echo "--------------------------------------------------"
echo "✅  MCP registration finished."
echo ""
echo "🔴  To enable Browser‑Tools, run this in a *second* terminal and leave it open:"
echo "    npx -y @agentdeskai/browser-tools-server"
echo "--------------------------------------------------"
claude mcp list
EOF

Save this as install-mcp-servers.sh, make it executable (chmod +x install-mcp-servers.sh), and run it while questioning your life choices.

Windows users: you'll need a .bat file instead. Good luck with that!

# Essential MCP Servers (Individual Installation)

Sequential Thinking

claude mcp add sequential-thinking -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking

Lets Claude actually think through problems instead of making things up with confidence.

Filesystem Access (update paths as desired)

claude mcp add filesystem -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem \
     ~/Documents ~/Desktop ~/Downloads ~/Projects

Give Claude access to your files.

Playwright (multi‑browser automation)

claude mcp add playwright -s user \
  -- npx -y @playwright/mcp

Puppeteer (deprecated but still works)

claude mcp add puppeteer -s user \
  -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer

Watch in existential dread as your browser operates itself.

Web Fetching

claude mcp add fetch -s user \
  -- npx -y @kazuph/mcp-fetch

Grabs content from websites.

Browser Tools

Gives Claude access to your browser's console logs, network traffic, and the ability to run performance/accessibility audits.

Step 1: Install the Chrome extension – download from the releases page and load it via Chrome’s extension manager. Step 2: Start the middleware server (keep this terminal open)

npx -y @agentdeskai/[email protected]

Step 3: Add the MCP server to Claude Code (in a separate terminal)

claude mcp add browser-tools -s user \
  -- npx -y @agentdeskai/[email protected]

Step 4: Open Chrome DevTools (F12) and find the BrowserTools tab.

★ Brave Search (Requires API Key)

# Replace YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with your actual Brave Search API key
claude mcp add brave-search -s user \
  -- env BRAVE_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE \
     npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search

Let Claude search the web and bring back results.

★ Firecrawl (Advanced Web Scraping — Requires API Key)

# Replace fc-YOUR_API_KEY with your actual Firecrawl API key
claude mcp add firecrawl -s user \
  -- env FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR_API_KEY \
     npx -y firecrawl-mcp

For when you need to scrape websites with industrial‑grade efficiency and minimal respect for robots.txt.

# The -s user vs -s local Thing

• -s user: Makes these tools available globally

• -s local: Only works in your current directory

# Troubleshooting

• Windows issues: prepend cmd /c before npx commands

• Timeout errors: MCP_TIMEOUT=10000 claude

• Connection problems: Type /mcp in Claude Code to see which servers are napping

• Filesystem access: Double‑check your paths

That's it. Save yourself the four hours of my life I'll never get back.

PS – Yes, this was written mostly with the help of Claude.

EDIT: Apparently there were some stupid Reddit formatting issues. It converted the "@" to "u/", I'm such a noob, sorry! I updated the script to include playwright which is a pretty good alternative to puppeteer. Thanks all for pointing out my numerous flaws.