Connect Claude Desktop

mcp.ggui.ai speaks the MCP Apps protocol, so any MCP-Apps-aware host can render ggui-generated UIs inline. Claude Desktop is the most polished client today; this page walks the install + first-use flow end to end.

The same install procedure works for claude.ai, Goose, and VS Code Copilot — anywhere you can add a remote MCP server and the host implements OAuth 2.1 + Dynamic Client Registration. See Other clients below.

Prerequisites

Claude Desktop on macOS or Windows. (download)
A free console.ggui.ai account — sign in with your email, no card required.

Step 1: Add the server

In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector and paste the URL:

https://mcp.ggui.ai/mcp

Leave authentication blank — the server will drive Claude through the OAuth ceremony on first use. Save.

Step 2: Approve the connection

The first time Claude calls a ggui tool (or you click Connect on the connector card), Claude pops a browser window to console.ggui.ai/oauth/consent.

Sign in to ggui (Cognito, email + password — same account that holds your connector keys).
Click Approve on the consent card. The console mints a fresh ggui_user_* API key labelled after Claude Desktop and hands it back to the client through the OAuth flow.
The browser closes. Claude shows the connector as connected.

What happened under the hood, briefly:

Claude Desktop discovered the auth server via RFC 9728 (/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource) and RFC 8414.
It registered itself as a client via RFC 7591 Dynamic Client Registration — no manual client_id to copy.
It ran OAuth 2.1 with PKCE against the consent screen, capturing your ggui_user_* key as its access token.

Full protocol details: OAuth on mcp.ggui.ai.

Step 3: Generate a UI

In a new chat, ask Claude to do something concrete enough to need a form. For example:

Help me triage 12 incoming product-support tickets. Show me a sortable table with severity, age, and a “draft reply” action per row.

Claude will call ggui_push with that intent. The MCP Apps capability advertised by mcp.ggui.ai tells Claude Desktop to render the result inline — you’ll see the table appear directly in the chat, not as an external link. Submit a row, the data flows back to Claude as if you’d typed it.

Tool-call budget and credits

Every push burns a small amount of credit (LLM time + render storage). New accounts get $5 of free credit out of the gate; you can top up from console.ggui.ai/credits when you run low.

If you’d rather use your own model account, paste your provider key into console.ggui.ai/keys/providers (BYOK — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter). When a BYOK key is on file for the model the request would have used, ggui calls the model on your tab and only charges for orchestration.

Revoke the connection

Two surfaces, both authoritative:

Claude Desktop — Settings → Connectors → ggui → Disconnect. Drops the cached token locally; the underlying API key on the ggui side is unaffected.
console.ggui.ai — find the key labelled Claude Desktop (or whatever your client called itself) on the home page and click Revoke. The next request from any client holding that token returns 401.

There’s no “list of connected clients” beyond the keys list — every MCP-Apps client lands as one row in your keys table, which is the boundary that matters for revocation.

Other clients

The same mcp.ggui.ai/mcp URL works in any host that ships MCP-Apps + OAuth-DCR:

claude.ai (web) — Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Same flow, browser-only.
Goose — goose configure then add a remote MCP server pointing at https://mcp.ggui.ai/mcp.
VS Code (Copilot) — mcp.json workspace file with { "ggui": { "url": "https://mcp.ggui.ai/mcp" } }. Copilot will trigger the OAuth ceremony on first tool call.
Anything else that does RFC 7591 + RFC 9728 — drop the URL in, the server’s discovery metadata bootstraps the rest.

Hosts that don’t speak MCP Apps yet (most CLI agents at time of writing) can still hit the same endpoint with a static Authorization: Bearer ggui_user_* header. They lose inline rendering — ggui_push still works, but the user opens the returned renderUrl in a separate browser tab.

Troubleshooting

“Failed to connect” in Claude Desktop after approving — usually a stale token cache. Disconnect from Claude Desktop’s connector panel, then reconnect. The OAuth ceremony re-runs and a fresh key is minted.

“This MCP server has not been activated” — your account has zero credits and no BYOK key on file. Top up at console.ggui.ai/credits or paste a provider key into console.ggui.ai/keys/providers.

No inline rendering, only a link — your MCP host doesn’t advertise MCP Apps capability. Either upgrade the host (Claude Desktop ships it from late-2025 onward) or open the link manually; the underlying session works either way.

Anything else — see Troubleshooting.