Claude Desktop Integration

Claude Desktop connects to MCP servers via claude_desktop_config.json. The Agent Receipts proxy wraps any MCP server transparently — Claude Desktop doesn’t know or care that the proxy is there.

Prerequisites

• mcp-proxy installed
• A signing key pair generated (see below)

Generate a signing key

mkdir -p ~/.agent-receipts
openssl genpkey -algorithm Ed25519 -out ~/.agent-receipts/github-proxy.pem
openssl pkey -in ~/.agent-receipts/github-proxy.pem -pubout \
  -out ~/.agent-receipts/github-proxy-pub.pem

Use absolute paths everywhere — Claude Desktop launches MCP servers with a clean environment where ~ expansion and $PATH are not available.

Configure claude_desktop_config.json

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github-audited": {
      "command": "/Users/YOU/go/bin/mcp-proxy",
      "args": [
        "-name", "github",
        "-key", "/Users/YOU/.agent-receipts/github-proxy.pem",
        "-receipt-db", "/Users/YOU/.agent-receipts/receipts.db",
        "/opt/homebrew/bin/mcp-server-github"
      ],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "YOUR_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The GitHub MCP server now runs behind the proxy — every tool call goes through it transparently.

Note: claude_desktop_config.json is not encrypted. Avoid committing it to version control, and prefer sourcing tokens from your OS keychain or a secret manager where possible.

Verifying receipts

After making tool calls, inspect the receipt store from your terminal:

# List all receipts
mcp-proxy list -receipt-db ~/.agent-receipts/receipts.db

# Verify chain integrity
mcp-proxy verify \
  -key ~/.agent-receipts/github-proxy-pub.pem \
  -receipt-db ~/.agent-receipts/receipts.db \
  <chain-id>

Gotchas

Absolute paths required. Claude Desktop launches MCP servers with a clean PATH. Use the full path to mcp-proxy (find it with which mcp-proxy) and the full path to the wrapped server binary.

Classic PATs for org-owned repos. GitHub’s fine-grained PATs can fail for org-level write operations even when permissions appear correct. Use a classic PAT with repo scope for org-owned repositories.

Per-session chain IDs. By default the proxy generates a new chain ID each session. Pass -chain <id> to persist a chain across sessions.

Old receipts show unknown. If you upgraded from a version before v0.2.0, existing receipts in the DB will always show Action: unknown — the tool name was never stored. Clear the DB and start fresh after upgrading.