Use Arcade with Claude Desktop

Prerequisites

1. Create an Arcade account
2. Get an Arcade API key
3. Create an Arcade MCP Gateway and select the tools you want to use

Set up Claude Desktop

1. Download and open Claude Desktop 
2. Claude Menu —> “Settings” —> “Developer” —> “Edit Config”
3. This will create a configuration file at:
   • On Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   • On Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
4. Open the configuration file and replace the file contents with this:

Replace YOUR_ARCADE_API_KEY_HERE with your actual Arcade API key and /path/to/python with the path to your Python interpreter and /path/to/arcade with the path to the Arcade package.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arcade-stdio": {
      "command": "bash",
      "args": [
        "-c",
        "export ARCADE_API_KEY=YOUR_ARCADE_API_KEY_HERE && /path/to/python /path/to/arcade serve --mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

5. Restart Claude Desktop. Upon restarting, you should have access to the Arcade tools you installed.