Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is a chat-first client — it doesn’t have a terminal, so it can’t run CLI commands like muxed call. Instead, muxed exposes a single proxy tool that lets Claude Desktop discover, inspect, and call tools through normal MCP tool calls.

How it works

When you run muxed mcp --proxy-tools, muxed starts an MCP server that registers a single exec tool (referenced as muxed:exec in prompts). This tool accepts a command string and an optional input object:

command: "servers"              → list connected servers
command: "tools"                → list all available tools
command: "tools email"          → list tools from the email server
command: "grep weather"         → search tools by name/description
command: "info slack/search"    → show full schema for a tool
command: "call slack/search"    → call a tool (pass args via input)

The input parameter is a JSON object passed directly as tool arguments, so the model never needs to escape JSON inside a string.

Setup

1. Configure your servers

If you already have servers in Claude Desktop’s config, run muxed init to import them:

npx muxed init

See Setup for details. Or add servers manually:

muxed mcp add my-server npx some-mcp-server --scope global

2. Add muxed to Claude Desktop

Edit your Claude Desktop config file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "muxed": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["muxed@latest", "mcp", "--proxy-tools"]
    }
  }
}

The --proxy-tools flag tells muxed to expose the proxy tool instead of just injecting instructions.

3. Use it

In Claude Desktop, the model sees a single muxed:exec tool. When it needs to interact with your MCP servers, it calls this tool with commands like:

• muxed:exec("tools") — discover what’s available
• muxed:exec("grep database") — find relevant tools
• muxed:exec("info postgres/query") — check the schema
• muxed:exec("call postgres/query", { sql: "SELECT ..." }) — execute the call

All your servers are accessible through one tool, keeping Claude Desktop’s tool list clean.

Why --proxy-tools?

Coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor have bash access — they can run muxed grep, muxed call, etc. as CLI commands. They don’t need a proxy tool; instructions alone are enough.

Claude Desktop can only interact through MCP tool calls. The --proxy-tools flag bridges this gap by wrapping the same CLI capabilities into a single MCP tool.

Client	Mode	How it works
Claude Code	muxed mcp	Injected instructions teach the agent CLI commands
Cursor	muxed mcp	Same — CLI commands via terminal
Claude Desktop	muxed mcp --proxy-tools	Proxy tool over stdio

Next steps

• Setup — Full setup details
• Configuration — Config options
• CLI Reference — All commands