MCP TS Quickstart

This is a quickstart for MCP in TypeScript.

It includes a basic MCP server implementation that uses the stdio transport, and fetches the top stories from Hacker News.

It is written in TypeScript and works without a build step by utilizing Node v23.

Based on the example provided in the MCP documentation.

preview

Usage

The snippet below requires git, nvm, and pnpm.

git clone [email protected]:cephalization/mcp-ts-quickstart.git
cd mcp-ts-quickstart
nvm install && nvm use
pnpm install

Once cloned and dependencies installed, you can add this server to Claude Desktop with a config similar to the following:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news": {
      "command": "/Users/tony/.nvm/versions/node/v23.6.0/bin/node",
      "args": ["/Users/tony/repos/mcp/src/index.ts"]
    }
  }
}

See the MCP documentation for more information on how to use Claude Desktop as a client.

Development

The following commands will install the dependencies, and then start the MCP server with the MCP Inspector UI as a client.

nvm install && nvm use
pnpm install
pnpm start

Because the server is build-less, you can simply "restart" the server inside of the inspector UI by pressing the "Restart" button.

Extending the server

The server is implemented in src/index.ts.

The topStories tool is implemented in src/tools.ts.

To add a new tool, you can copy the topStories tool and modify it.

When importing local src files, make sure to use the .ts extension so that node can resolve it.

When importing types, make sure to add the type keyword in front of the import so that node can strip it out at runtime.

When importing libraries, make sure to import the actual source file extension, if it does not provide an exports mapping.

MCP Inspector

The MCP Inspector is a UI for interacting with MCP servers.

When run, it will be available at http://localhost:6274.