MCP with Claude Gateway Mode

[ulmulm]

I would like to ask whether it is possible to use the DEVONthink MCP server with Claude in Gateway mode.

At the moment, I can see Claude Desktop in the DEVONthink settings.

However, I’m unable to access DEVONthink within Claude.

And here’s the gateway setting in claude developer mode:

[BLUEFROG]

This is a question for Anthropic, not us. We only make the MCP server available but we don’t control the access to it.

[psnDN9999]

Same symptom here, with a concrete cause that turned out to be worth checking. I can’t promise it’s the same as yours — I was connecting from Claude Desktop, not gateway mode — but the visible behaviour was identical: “Claude Desktop” ticked in DEVONthink’s settings, and nothing reachable on the Claude side.

Setup: DEVONthink 4 Pro, Claude Desktop, MCP enabled under Settings > AI > MCP with the “Claude Desktop” connector ticked.

What was actually wrong

The tick was there, but the connector had never been written to Claude’s configuration file. No devonthink entry under Claude’s Settings > Developer, and no DEVONthink tools in conversations.

How to check

In Terminal:

cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

If the output has no mcpServers key, the connector was never installed, whatever the checkbox says. In my case the file contained only Claude’s own preferences.

Two things that make this easy to get wrong

On current builds that file holds both Claude’s application preferences and the MCP servers. So:

• do not overwrite it — pasting only the MCP block wipes your Claude preferences (I did this; Claude threw an error on next launch)
• quit Claude completely first (Cmd-Q) — the app rewrites this file when it exits, so an edit made while it is running gets discarded

Fix

1. Quit Claude with Cmd-Q. It must be gone from the Dock.

2. Back the file up:

    cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json ~/Desktop/claude_config_backup.json
   
   

3. Add the key without touching anything else. One line, no indentation — a multi-line script loses its leading spaces when pasted into Terminal and dies with IndentationError:

    python3 -c 'import json,os;p=os.path.expanduser("~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json");c=json.load(open(p));c.setdefault("mcpServers",{})["devonthink"]={"command":"/Applications/DEVONthink.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DEVONthink MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/DEVONthink MCP","args":["--stdio"]};json.dump(c,open(p,"w"),indent=2);print("ok",list(c.keys()))'
   
   

   It prints the resulting top-level keys. The list varies by installation; what matters is that mcpServers is in it.

4. Reopen Claude. devonthink appears under Settings > Developer as running, and the tools are available. In my case they showed up in the conversation I already had open, without starting a new one.

The block being added is exactly what DEVONthink’s “Copy JSON” button gives you:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "devonthink": {
      "command": "/Applications/DEVONthink.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DEVONthink MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/DEVONthink MCP",
      "args": ["--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

It just has to be merged into the existing file rather than replacing it.

What I can’t tell you

• Why the checkbox doesn’t write the file. A sandbox restriction on writing into Claude’s application support folder is plausible, but I have not verified it.
• Whether this also fixes gateway mode. I only tested Claude Desktop, so if your setup differs the check in step one is still worth two seconds, but the outcome may not be the same.
• Whether a DEVONthink or Claude update will overwrite the entry again. Worth re-checking after either updates.

Sanity check before relaunching, if you want one:

python3 -m json.tool ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

If that reprints the JSON, the file is valid. If it errors, restore the backup.