Connect Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is the Claude app for macOS and Windows. Desktop apps don't read your terminal's settings, so you give Claude the full path to AgentTx.

Before you start

• AgentTx is installed and agenttx --version works (overview).
• Claude Desktop is installed and up to date (Claude menu → Check for Updates…).

Step 1 — Copy your settings

In a terminal, run:

agenttx connect claude-desktop

It prints a block of settings that already contains the full path to AgentTx on your computer. It looks like this, with your own path:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agenttx": {
      "command": "/Users/you/.agenttx/bin/agenttx",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Copy the block from your terminal, not from this page.

Step 2 — Open Claude Desktop's settings file

1. Click the Claude menu in your computer's menu bar (not the settings inside the chat window) and choose Settings…
2. In the left sidebar, choose Developer.
3. Click Edit Config.

This opens claude_desktop_config.json in a text editor. The file is here:

Step 3 — Paste and save

• If the file is empty (or only contains {}), replace everything with the block you copied.
• If it already has an "mcpServers" section, add only the "agenttx": { … } part inside it, with a comma between servers.

Save the file.

Step 4 — Restart Claude Desktop

Quit Claude Desktop completely (on macOS: Claude → Quit Claude; on Windows: right-click the tray icon → Quit), then open it again.

Step 5 — Check the connection

1. In a new chat, click the + button in the bottom-left corner of the message box.
2. Hover over Connectors and click Manage connectors.
3. Select agenttx. You should see its tools: begin_transaction, run_step, commit_transaction and the others.

Step 6 — Try it

Paste this into a new chat:

Use the AgentTx tools for this task. Begin a transaction, save the customer id
"c-404" with kv.put, then create invoice "inv-1" for that customer with
record.insert (reference customer_id to the customers table).
If AgentTx rolls back, follow its hint, then commit the transaction.

Claude asks for permission before each tool call. Click Allow. Then follow Your first safe task to understand the results.

Remove AgentTx

Delete the "agenttx": { … } entry from claude_desktop_config.json, save and restart Claude Desktop.

Having trouble?

Claude Desktop writes connection logs here:

• macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-agenttx.log
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp-server-agenttx.log

See Troubleshooting for what the messages mean.