How to Connect Claude Desktop to Supermachine MCP Servers

Choose from 3,000+ publicly available MCP servers

Want to give your AI assistant more muscle? MCP servers let you connect assistants to external tools—like GitHub actions, file management, or custom APIs—through a modular, pluggable interface. Supermachine makes setting up and managing these servers super straightforward, and Claude Desktop supports them (with a little help from Supergateway).

💡 What is an MCP server? Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers provide tools that AI assistants can use to interact with external systems. They act as a bridge between AI models and real-world applications, giving them capabilities beyond just chat.

In this guide, we'll show you how to:

Set up an MCP server in Supermachine

Connect it to Claude Desktop

Use it to interact with real tools (like GitHub)

Step 1: Create a New MCP Server in Supermachine

In this example we are choosing public Github MCP template

Once you're logged into Supermachine, head to the MCP Servers section and click New MCP Server.

You'll see a list of public MCP server templates—over 3000 are available. Choose one based on what tools you need. In our case, we're picking a GitHub MCP server.

Step 2: Configure the MCP Server

When you select a server template, Supermachine will:

Inspect the repository files

Identify setup options (e.g., required tokens or commands)

GitHub MCP server configuration screen

For GitHub, the required setup includes:

A run command like:

npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-github

A GitHub personal access token (with repo permissions)

You can create your own GitHub personal access token here.

Paste in your token, choose whether to spin up a new machine or use an existing one, and define the machine specs (e.g., memory).

💡 You can defer some inputs like tokens to runtime using Superargs—look for the icon next to configurable fields.

Step 3: Launch and Verify

Click Continue and Supermachine will:

Spin up the machine

Run the MCP command

Once that is done, you can click Verify MCP server and Supermachine will connect to your server to verify that it is set up correctly.

After a few seconds, you'll get verification that the server is live and working.

Creating and verifying an MCP server

Once verified, you'll see:

The tool list (like create file, update repo, etc.)

If you click Open MCP server, you’ll see:

The command used to launch the server

The SSE URL—this is key for connecting to this MCP server in MCP clients

💡 The MCP server exposes a standard set of tools defined by the server template. For GitHub, this includes tools for repository management, file operations, issue tracking, and more. Each tool is registered with a specific name, description, and parameter schema that Claude will use when invoking it.

Step 4: Connect the MCP Server to Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop doesn’t natively support remote MCP servers over SSE. To bridge this, use Supergateway, which converts SSE into STDIO format Claude supports.

💡 Claude Desktop supports the STDIO protocol for tools but not SSE (Server-Sent Events). Supergateway translates between these two protocols, allowing Claude to communicate with remote MCP servers.

In Supermachine, click How to Use next to your MCP server.

Follow the Claude Desktop instructions:

Open the Claude Desktop App

Go to Settings > Developer > Edit Config

Replace the current JSON config with the one Supermachine provides

{ "mcpServers": { "supermachineHost": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "-y", "supergateway", "--sse", "https://mcp-server-728d3008-180f-4c91-9c28-74624ae7f1b5.supermachine.app" ] } } }

Save and restart Claude Desktop

After rebooting, you'll see the tools show up in Claude's interface.

Adding MCP server to Claude Desktop

Step 5: Use the MCP Tools in Claude

Now that you're connected, Claude can call MCP tools like any native skill.

💡 Note: When Claude first attempts to use MCP tools, you'll be prompted to approve tool usage for the chat. You can grant permission for the current chat or for all future chats.

Try a prompt like:

"Find my open pull requests and summarize the most recent one."

Claude will:

Use the GitHub tools from your MCP server

Search for your open pull requests

Fetch details about the most recent one

Present a helpful summary of the changes

Using the MCP tools in Claude

And that's it—your AI assistant now has hands!