Authless

You can run a remote MCP server that exposes its capabilities over a public URL, enabling you to access its tools from cloud-based clients or your own local tooling. This setup is useful for experimentation, sharing tools with teammates, and integrating MCP-powered workflows into your existing environments without managing authentication in the client side.

How to use

Connect to your remote MCP server from an MCP client to harness the tools it provides. You can use the Cloudflare AI Playground to run and test your MCP tools directly in a browser. Open the playground, enter your deployed MCP server URL, and start issuing tool requests from there.

You can also connect from local MCP clients using the mcp-remote proxy. For Claude Desktop, configure the MCP server in the client settings so tools become available locally. The following configuration shows how to point to your remote server, so you can invoke its tools as if they were running on your machine.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "calculator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8787/sse"  // or remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse
      ]
    }
  }
}

How to install

Prerequisites: you need Node.js and npm installed on your system. Ensure you have a modern Node.js LTS release and npm comes with it.

Step 1: Create the MCP server project connected to the remote host.

Step 2: Use the Cloudflare template to bootstrap your remote MCP server.

Step 3: Deploy and run locally or in the cloud as shown in the commands below.

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

Additional sections

Customizing your MCP server is done by adding tools inside the init() method of src/index.ts using this.server.tool(...). This lets you define new capabilities that are exposed to MCP clients and playgrounds.

Connect to the Cloudflare AI Playground to test and run your MCP tools in a remote client. Use the deployment URL shown after you deploy your server, and paste it into the Playground to start experimenting.

To connect Claude Desktop to your remote MCP server, you can use the mcp-remote proxy. In Claude Desktop, go to Settings > Developer > Edit Config and update with the following configuration. Restart Claude to load the tools.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "calculator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8787/sse"  // or remote-mcp-server-authless.your-account.workers.dev/sse
      ]
    }
  }
}

Available tools

tool

Add custom functions to the MCP server by defining each tool inside the init() method using this.server.tool(...).