Introducing MCPBolt — one config, every AI tool

I got tired of copy-pasting the same Supabase config into eight different JSON files. So I built a tool to do it for me.

MCPBolt is a free, open-source, local-only CLI and Mac menu bar app that installs any MCP server into any AI coding tool from a single paste. No account. No cloud. No JSON archaeology.

The three-second pitch

You paste a config snippet once. MCPBolt:

Detects the format automatically (Claude JSON, VS Code JSON, TOML, YAML, bare URL, npx one-liner, Docker command)
Parses it into an internal representation that captures name, transport, and credentials
Writes the correct native config for each tool you select, at each scope (user-level or project-level)

That's the whole thing. It's not a registry, a marketplace, or a cloud service. It's a format translator and a file writer.

What a run actually looks like

Here is a real session. You found the Supabase MCP server and grabbed their config snippet:

$ npx mcpbolt

  mcpbolt ⚡ — wire MCP servers into any AI coding tool

  Paste config below. Press Enter twice (or Ctrl+D) when done:

  > { "mcpServers": { "supabase": { "url": "https://mcp.supabase.com/mcp" } } }
  >

  Detected
    Format: JSON (Claude Desktop / VS Code / Cursor / Zed)
    Servers: 1 — supabase

✔ Server name › supabase
✔ Select targets › Claude Desktop, Claude Code (global), Cursor (global), VS Code (project)
✔ Preview changes before writing? › Yes

  Preview
    Claude Desktop (user)   → ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
    Claude Code (user)      → ~/.claude.json
    Cursor (user)           → ~/.cursor/mcp.json
    VS Code (project)       → .vscode/mcp.json

✔ Write files now? › Yes

  ✓ Wired "supabase" into 4 targets.

  → Quit and reopen Claude Desktop to load the new server.
  → Open Cursor → Settings → MCP and click Refresh to activate.
  → Run "Developer: Reload Window" in VS Code (Cmd+Shift+P).

Start to finish: about 30 seconds. And you never touched a JSON file manually.

💡

It handles every input format. Paste a bare URL (https://mcp.example.com/sse), an npx one-liner, a Docker command, a Claude Desktop JSON blob, a VS Code servers block, Continue YAML, or Codex TOML. MCPBolt auto-detects all of them and converts to whatever each target needs.

Ten tools supported on day one

MCPBolt knows how to write to all of these, at both user (global) and project scope where applicable:

Claude Desktop
Claude Code (global ~/.claude.json and project .mcp.json)
Cursor
VS Code
Codex CLI
Windsurf
Zed
Continue
Gemini CLI
Roo Code

MCPBolt auto-detects which tools are installed on your machine and pre-checks only those in the target selector. You won't be prompted to write to Zed if Zed isn't installed.

The menu bar app

For developers who prefer to stay out of the terminal, MCPBolt also ships as a native macOS menu bar app (MCPBoltBar). Click the lightning bolt icon in your menu bar, paste a config, pick your targets, and write. Same flow, no terminal.

It also gives you a health view: which servers are wired into which tools, which are present in some tools but missing from others, and a coverage badge so you can see at a glance whether your Claude Desktop and Cursor configs are in sync.

What makes it different

There are a few things about MCPBolt that matter to me as the person who built it:

Local-only. Your MCP configs contain API keys, database URLs, and service tokens. They should never leave your machine. MCPBolt runs entirely locally. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Merge, never overwrite. MCPBolt reads your existing config, inserts or updates the one server entry you asked it to write, and writes back. Everything else in your config is untouched. A .bak file is created next to every file that gets modified, so if something goes wrong you can restore.

Dry-run by default.You see a preview of every change before anything is written. The “write files now?” prompt is not optional.

MIT licensed and open source. The code is on GitHub. You can read it, fork it, contribute to it, or audit it. Adding a new tool target is one file.

Install it

Run without installing:

npx mcpbolt

Or install globally:

npm install -g mcpbolt

Mac menu bar app via Homebrew:

brew install --cask vishmathpati/mcpbolt/mcpboltbar

If you run into anything unexpected or want to add support for a tool MCPBolt doesn't cover yet, open an issue or a pull request. Adding a new target really is one file.

Download MCPBolt and let me know what you think.