Claude Desktop Integration

Claude Desktop speaks the Model Context Protocol. Point it at cmdop mcp stdio and the same tools your local agent uses — terminal, files, ask_agent, board — appear inside Claude.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure:

CMDOP is installed and on your shell PATH (which cmdop should print a path).
You have signed in at least once: cmdop login.
The daemon is running on the machine you want to expose: cmdop agent start and cmdop agent status reports ONLINE.
Claude Desktop is installed and has been launched at least once (so the config directory exists).

Where Claude Desktop reads MCP config

Claude Desktop loads MCP servers from claude_desktop_config.json:

Platform	Path
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json`
Linux	`~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`

If the file does not exist yet, create it with the snippet below. If it already has mcpServers, merge the cmdop entry in.

Add the CMDOP server entry


{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cmdop": {
      "command": "cmdop",
      "args": ["mcp", "stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Save the file and fully restart Claude Desktop (Quit, not just close the window). Claude spawns cmdop mcp stdio as a subprocess and speaks JSON-RPC over its stdin/stdout.

Claude Desktop launches MCP servers from a non-interactive shell. Your interactive shell’s PATH does not apply. If cmdop lives somewhere unusual (Homebrew on Apple Silicon at /opt/homebrew/bin, for example), use the absolute path: "command": "/opt/homebrew/bin/cmdop".

Verify it loaded

Open Claude Desktop and start a new chat. The tools picker (the slider icon in the input box) should list a cmdop group with entries like execute_command, read_file, ask_agent, issue_create. If the group is empty or missing, jump to Troubleshooting.

Ask Claude to confirm: “Can you list the cmdop tools you have access to?”

Permissions and the gate

Every tool call Claude makes goes through CMDOP’s permission gate. The gate fires for remote callers — Claude Desktop counts as a remote caller because it is not running inside cmdop chat.

Recommended setup for an exposed machine like vps-audi:


# Strict default — explicit allow required
cmdop permissions mode strict
 
# Allow read-only inspection
cmdop permissions allow 'read_file(/var/log/**)'
cmdop permissions allow 'execute_command(uptime)'
cmdop permissions allow 'execute_command(systemctl status *)'
 
# Tail the audit log to see what Claude tries
cmdop permissions audit --tail 20 -f

A denial in Claude looks like a tool error. Run cmdop permissions audit --tail 5 to see why.

Choosing the workspace

The MCP server uses the daemon’s currently active workspace. Switch on the daemon machine, then restart Claude Desktop:


cmdop connect workspace use acme-prod
# Restart Claude Desktop so it re-spawns cmdop mcp stdio

Cross-machine reach from inside Claude

Because CMDOP exposes ask_agent and ask_agents, Claude can fan out from your laptop to remote machines through the same single MCP entry:


You: ask the agent on mac-studio for its uptime, and on vps-audi for the
last 50 lines of /var/log/syslog. Summarize both.

Claude calls ask_agent("mac-studio", ...) and ask_agent("vps-audi", ...) in parallel. Both go through each receiver’s permission gate. See Agent Communication for the full model.

Updating CMDOP

Claude Desktop holds the cmdop binary open while a server is registered. Quit Claude Desktop before running cmdop update apply, then relaunch.