Remote

You set up a remote MCP server that you can run locally or deploy to Cloudflare, and then connect MCP clients like Claude or an MCP Inspector to control and test tools over SSE or HTTP. This guide walks you through developing locally, connecting clients, deploying, and debugging.

How to use

Start your local MCP server and connect your MCP clients to it. Use the local SSE endpoint http://localhost:8787/sse to interact with the server from an MCP Inspector or Claude Desktop. You can run things locally for development, then deploy to Cloudflare for remote access.

How to install

# prerequisites
# Ensure you have Node.js and npm installed on your system
node -v
npm -v

# clone the server project
git clone git@github.com:cloudflare/ai.git

# install dependencies
cd ai
npm install

# run locally
npx nx dev remote-mcp-server

Additional content

Configure local and remote connections for clients like Claude Desktop or the MCP Inspector. You can run a local proxy and point Claude to the local SSE URL, or point Claude to a remote workers.dev URL after deployment. Use the examples below to wire up your client configurations.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "math": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8787/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

To connect Claude Desktop to your local MCP server, use the following configuration. This runs a local proxy so Claude communicates with your MCP server over HTTP.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "math": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8787/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For a remote deployment, Claude should connect to the Worker URL you obtain after deployment. Use the following configuration pattern once you have the Worker URL.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "math": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://worker-name.account-name.workers.dev/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Deploy to Cloudflare

Prepare and deploy your remote MCP server to Cloudflare Workers. Create an OAuth KV namespace and deploy the worker so your MCP clients can reach it remotely.

npx wrangler kv namespace create OAUTH_KV

Then follow the guided steps to add the KV namespace ID to wrangler.jsonc, and run the deployment.

npm run deploy

Debugging

If you run into issues, restart the client you are using (Claude or MCP Inspector). You can also connect directly from the command line to the local server to verify the SSE endpoint is reachable.

npx mcp-remote http://localhost:8787/sse

If needed, you can clear local authentication state to resolve auth issues.

rm -rf ~/.mcp-auth

Available tools

MCP Inspector

A tool to explore and interact with the MCP server by connecting via SSE and issuing tool calls.

Claude Desktop

An application to integrate with the MCP server by configuring a local or remote endpoint to access tools through a proxy.