Jason Gilmore - Technologist, entrepreneur, bestselling author

When installing MCP servers inside Claude Desktop you'll occasionally encounter cryptic errors like this upon Claude Desktop startup:

To debug these issues, click the Open Developer Settings button. You'll be taken to the Settings window's Local MCP Servers section:

Select the problem MCP Server, and then click the Open Logs Folder button:

On macOS a new Finder window will open, which is about as good as useless if you want to tail the log. However there is a little known macOS trick you can use to copy the log file path:

Now open a new terminal and tail the log:

$ tail -f /Users/wjgilmore/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-add.log

Let's Talk About MCP Servers

I'm really into this fascinating technology and would love to talk to similarly minded developers. DM me on Twitter at @wjgilmore.