Connect Claude Desktop to Willder

Anthropic's desktop app.

Transport: stdio, through the pinned mcp-remote bridge to Streamable HTTP · Auth: Authorization: Bearer <capability token>, sent by the bridge · Endpoint: https://willder.ai/api/mcp

Half of this row is verified, and the two halves are different claims. The server's half passes: on 2026-10-05, against deployed commit 2eed3f05, npx tsx scripts/mcp-client-probe.ts --client=claude-desktop --transport-only ran the bridge config below against https://willder.ai/api/mcp, and the initialisation sequence, tools/list and one scoped memory_query all answered through the bridge. That run does not test refusal: the bridge path sends a valid token only. The client's half is unrun. Nobody has run this client against Willder, so nothing here claims it works. Why: Claude Desktop is a desktop app, and its connection is only visible in its own window. That needs a person's run recorded in manual-runs.json, naming who ran it, when, and on which commit — see the index.

Get a token

Open Access → Tokens in your Willder workspace and issue a capability token for the narrowest scope that answers your questions. The value is shown once; only its hash is stored. Keep it in the client's secret storage or an environment variable — never in a committed file, a prompt or a screenshot.

Terminal

export WILLDER_TOKEN='<your capability token>'

Config file

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows (Settings → Developer → Edit Config opens it). Claude Desktop starts this bridge on your own computer, and the bridge sends the header itself:

JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "willder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote@0.14.3", "https://willder.ai/api/mcp", "--header", "Authorization:${AUTH_HEADER}"],
      "env": { "AUTH_HEADER": "Bearer <your capability token>" }
    }
  }
}

There is deliberately no space after Authorization: — Claude Desktop on Windows does not escape spaces inside args, and mcp-remote expands ${AUTH_HEADER} itself. Restart Claude Desktop after saving the file. The bridge needs Node.js on your PATH for npx.

Why not Add custom connector

Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector does not work for Willder today. It is the same connector system claude.ai uses: Anthropic's server guide says "the same connector infrastructure backs" claude.ai, Claude Desktop, mobile, Cowork and Claude Code's connectors. That system cannot deliver a capability token:

On 2026-10-07 no header arrived. A custom connector on a Max account, with authentication set to No sign-in and Authorization and X-Willder-Token entered as request headers, sent an initialize request carrying neither. The details are on the claude.ai page.
Request headers are a limited beta. Anthropic's custom connector documentation says the Request headers section is "available to a limited set of organizations", and that each custom header name needs Anthropic's approval.
The other sign-in it supports is OAuth, which Willder does not serve yet.

The test was run from claude.ai, not from the desktop window. The documentation is the reason this page treats the two as one: no desktop-only connector run has been recorded. When MCP OAuth ships on /api/mcp, this dialog becomes a second way to connect, and this page will say so once a run is recorded.

Verify the connection

Settings → Developer lists willder as running, and the tool menu in a chat lists the Willder tools. This is a UI flow; it needs a recorded manual run, which has not happened yet.

Notes

This page first offered the custom connector as the preferred path, on the strength of the request-headers beta. The 2026-10-07 claude.ai test showed that path sends no token, so the local bridge is now the only path this page commits.

See the index for the other clients and mcp/README.md for the tool surface and the token rules.