Setting Up Environment

Setting Up Your MCP Development Environment

To build MCP servers, you need Node.js 18+ and a package manager (npm or pnpm). You'll also want Claude Desktop installed to test your servers. Let's set everything up.

Step 1: Create a New Project

bash
# Create a new directory for your MCP server
mkdir my-mcp-server
cd my-mcp-server

# Initialize a Node.js project
npm init -y

# Install the MCP SDK and dependencies
npm install @modelcontextprotocol/sdk zod

# Install TypeScript (recommended)
npm install -D typescript @types/node tsx

# Initialize TypeScript
npx tsc --init

Step 2: Configure TypeScript

Update your tsconfig.json to support ES modules and modern features:
typescript
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "ES2022",
    "module": "Node16",
    "moduleResolution": "Node16",
    "outDir": "./dist",
    "rootDir": "./src",
    "strict": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "skipLibCheck": true
  },
  "include": ["src/**/*"]
}

Step 3: Update package.json

typescript
// Add these to your package.json:
{
  "type": "module",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "tsc",
    "dev": "tsx src/index.ts",
    "start": "node dist/index.js"
  },
  "bin": {
    "my-mcp-server": "./dist/index.js"
  }
}

Tip:The "type": "module" is important — MCP SDK uses ES modules. Make sure your package.json includes this.

Step 4: Configure Claude Desktop

To test your server with Claude Desktop, you'll need to add it to your Claude configuration. We'll cover this in the next lesson after building the server.
PreviewTypeScriptRead Only
Copy this code and run it locally with npx tsx server.ts

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