Skip to main content
add-mcp treats any AI coding assistant that speaks the Model Context Protocol as an agent. When you run the install command, add-mcp locates the correct configuration file for each agent and writes your MCP server entry in the format that agent expects — handling differences in file format (JSON, TOML, YAML), config key names, and server schema so you never have to do it manually.

​
Supported agents

The table below lists every agent add-mcp knows about, the value you pass to --agent (-a), whether project-level configuration is supported, and where each config file lives. A dash (—) in the Project config path column means that agent only supports a global config file. See Scopes for more detail on how add-mcp routes installs for these agents.
The paths shown above use macOS conventions (~/Library/Application Support/…). On Linux, add-mcp uses $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (defaulting to ~/.config) in place of Library/Application Support. On Windows, it uses %APPDATA% (defaulting to ~/AppData/Roaming). The path shown for Goose’s global config (~/.config/goose/config.yaml) applies on Linux and macOS; on Windows it resolves to %APPDATA%/Block/goose/config/config.yaml.

​
Agent aliases

Several alternative names are accepted and automatically resolved to the canonical agent identifier: Aliases can be used anywhere the --agent flag is accepted.

​
Targeting a specific agent

Pass -a (or --agent) one or more times to install exclusively to those agents, skipping auto-detection entirely:
When -a is provided, add-mcp skips the interactive agent-selection prompt and writes directly to the specified agents’ config files.

​
Installing to all agents

Use --all to install to every supported agent at once, regardless of what is detected in the current directory:
Pair --all with --gitignore when you want to write project-level configs without committing them. add-mcp will append every generated project config path to .gitignore automatically. See Scopes for details on the --gitignore flag.

​
Agent transport support

Most agents support all three transport types — HTTP, SSE, and stdio. The exception is Claude Desktop, which only supports local stdio servers through its config file. If you try to install a remote server to Claude Desktop, add-mcp will warn you and suggest using the in-app Settings → Connectors flow instead. See Transports for the full breakdown.