Remote

You can run a remote MCP server that serves tools over HTTP and also host a local runtime that your MCP clients connect to. This setup lets you expose your MCP capabilities to clients like the Cloudflare AI Playground or Claude Desktop, enabling you to run and test your tools from anywhere.

How to use

Connect to your remote MCP server from an MCP client to access your tools. You can deploy the server to Cloudflare Workers and then point your client at the deployed URL. For testing and local development, you can also connect using a local runtime proxy that forwards requests to the remote server.

Using the Cloudflare AI Playground, do the following:

1. Open the Playground and enter your deployed MCP server URL, for example: https://remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse.

2. You will see your MCP tools available in the playground interface, ready to run with a few clicks.

You can also connect Claude Desktop to your server by configuring the MCP connection to point to either the local proxy (http://localhost:8787/sse) or the remote server URL (https://remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse). Then restart Claude to load the tools.

How to install

Prerequisites: you need Node.js and npm installed on your machine. Ensure you are using a shell with network access to install Cloudflare dependencies.

Step 1: Create the remote MCP server project configured for Cloudflare workers

npm create cloudflare@latest -- my-mcp-server --template=cloudflare/ai/demos/remote-mcp-authless

Step 2: Open the project directory and install dependencies if needed

npm install

Step 3: Start or deploy your MCP server

npm run deploy

• Replace with the actual deployment command if your setup uses a different script name. Follow the deployment flow to publish your server to a URL like remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse.

## Additional notes and configuration

Server configuration lets you expose tools via two connection methods: an HTTP URL for remote access and a local stdio proxy that runs a runtime and forwards to the remote server.

HTTP remote connection example

{ "mcpServers": { "calculator": { "type": "http", "name": "calculator", "url": "https://remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse", "args": [] } } }

Local stdio proxy connection example

{ "mcpServers": { "calculator": { "type": "stdio", "name": "calculator", "command": "npx", "args": [ "mcp-remote", "http://localhost:8787/sse" ] } } }