Hi all! I normally work on the PyTorch project but I've been on baby leave for the past month, so I've been playing around with AI as a user rather than a framework implementor. I really liked the agent experience with Claude Code, but I couldn't really justify spending so many dollars on API costs for random side projects. I already pay for a Claude Pro subscription though, and it turns out you can simulate many of Claude Code's features with an MCP. If you have a Pro subscription, check this out! I think it really captures the Claude Code experience quite well, without forcing you to pay for API tokens.
This requires an MCP-compliant client, for which Claude Desktop seems to be the main (or only?) choice.<p>Note that Claude Desktop can be run on Linux using <a href="https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian</a>, which repackages the Windows version to run on Linux (it's an Electron app, so it just needs to stub out the native interface, which seems mostly for cosmetic things).<p>It would be really nice though if the web versions of Claude, ChatGPT, etc. added MCP support directly: this should be achievable with help from a WebExtension and a native binary to proxy messages from the WebExtension to the MCP server.<p>It should also be possible to write such a WebExtension by a third-party (that injects messages in the conversation), although it's possible the LLM companies might block it.
It'd be really nice if the AI providers just discounted API tokens against your subscriptions so they were in-effect just pre-paying for (ideally a discounted) set amount of tokens.
Related ongoing thread:<p><i>Hacking Your Own AI Coding Assistant with Claude Pro and MCP</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410866">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410866</a>
Hey there, excited first time user here.
Thanks for creating this!<p>I started playing around with it yesterday evening. Running Claude Desktop under manjaro linux with some tweaks, I did managed to activate codemcp.<p>As I am also quite new with mcp and how to proper use the protocol in tools, I am not sure I did everything correct. I did also install filesystem, git, github and sequential-thinking along side.<p>However, git will not work. The addition of the mcp git server might not be needed? But without it, it did also not work<p>However, what it has done so far is mind blowing. I did create a long query the other day about a project idea. This generated a road map, detailed implementation instruction, guidlines, all that is needed to complete the problem. I let it Claude Desktop read in the files with help of codemcp.<p>Claude Dekstop have been working for multiple hours before I seem to have hot some kind of limit. I now get the message to type continue, but it always start the with the same task.<p>And what it has been created is awesome. The frontend is nearly finished, but it lacked to create the startup code first.
Overall I am blow away what I can do with mcp and esp. with this small lib the author has created here. Code quality is good and event though I had multiple limits, where I needed to type continue, the code is logically make sense. Really good!<p>I also do not yet know how I can continue a old session.<p>P.S.
@anthropic, If you are reading this. I really do not want to abuse your service. Please, instead of giving me no answer, or beeing stuck in an infinite loop, give me a proper return code and a error, that I reached my limit for the next X minutes or so. I would really love this
When I posted this to Reddit there was a pretty lively discussion there: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/s/wRmnREUWzn" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/s/wRmnREUWzn</a>
Only gripe I have with the tool is that once you've gotten a country right a few times it zooms in too far. I still had no clue where Eritrea was after getting it right like four times. Just got lucky.<p>But now that the map only shows me three possible countries I can trivially remember which one it was. Ask me again tomorrow while only showing me the full map and I might guess it's in South America.
I am using Windsurf and consistently running low Flex credits and was looking into MCP for local file editing.<p>Would be interested in hearing what you learned creating Codemcp, how you find MCP as a protocol, and something else that you found interesting doing your project.
Nice<p>btw with claude desktop you can easily hack it to auto-allow MCP, save yourself from clicking "allow" all the time. Dangerous of course if you auto-approve write actions!<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1h9harx/auto_approve_mcp_tool_calls/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1h9harx/auto_appr...</a>
Goose from Block is also a client that supports MCP.
It can be used both with UI or as a CLI: <a href="https://block.github.io/goose/" rel="nofollow">https://block.github.io/goose/</a>
I've been using it for the past hour or so.<p>I told it to make a TODO list (based on my instructions) and now I'm just repeatedly creating a new chat just saying 'work on the todo list'. The thing I'm giving it to do is pretty easy (fix some React components to add types and replace hardcoded strings with props). Doing the same thing in Cursor was annoying, due to the chatter, and the fact I had to click 'Accept all'.<p>For single file changes, it's nice. I haven't tried it with more complex things yet.
For those already using this MCP, what does it bring more comparing to just assemble more specialised MCPs together, like filesystem, fetch, git, brave-search.
I accidentally realized I could do this with their official filesystem server and it works ok. Certainly haven't felt the need to use Claude code or cline since.