Get started#

The Scrive MCP server connects MCP clients to Scrive’s document automation platform. You run it on your own machine — over stdio for local clients such as Claude Desktop, or as an HTTP server (scrive-mcp http) for clients that connect over HTTP.

This guide covers the stdio setup with Claude Desktop.

Configuring Claude Desktop#

1. Install the package#

The package is published to the public npm registry, so no authentication is required.

npm install -g @scrive_ab/mcp

This installs the scrive-mcp command globally.

2. Get OAuth credentials from Scrive#

  1. Sign in to your Scrive account.
  2. Go to Account settings → Integrations.
  3. Generate a Client ID and Client Secret for the MCP integration.

3. Authenticate#

Run:

scrive-mcp auth

The command prompts for your Scrive server, the Client ID, and the Client Secret. It opens your browser to complete OAuth and saves the credentials to a well-known location on your hard drive.

4. Configure Claude Desktop#

Edit Claude Desktop’s config file:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add a scrive entry under mcpServers. After stdio, list one or more directories the server is allowed to read PDFs from — tools that take a local file path (such as create_document) reject paths outside this list. ~ is expanded.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scrive": {
      "command": "scrive-mcp",
      "args": ["stdio", "~/Documents", "~/Downloads"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The Scrive tools appear in the tool list (look for the hammer icon).

5. Verify#

Ask Claude “List my Scrive documents”. The list_documents tool runs and returns your documents.

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