Claude Desktop Cookbook

What you'll build

By the end of this guide you will have Claude Desktop connected to the Leto SEO MCP server. Claude will be able to call all 10 orb_* tools, 2 literal resources, and 3 resource templates directly from natural-language prompts in your conversations. You will run one tool (portfolio health check) and read one templated resource (site metrics) to confirm end-to-end connectivity.

Prerequisites

• •Claude Desktop (latest version) — download from claude.ai/download
• •Node.js — required to run the mcp-remote proxy via npx. Download from nodejs.org.
• •A Leto SEO API key — see Authentication — Generating an API key if you haven't created one yet.

Step 1 — Locate your config file

Claude Desktop reads MCP server configuration from a JSON file. The file may not exist yet — if it doesn't, Claude Desktop will create it the first time you edit it through the settings UI.

# macOS
~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

# Windows
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Step 2 — Add the Leto MCP server

Open claude_desktop_config.json in any text editor and add (or merge) the following JSON. Replace sk_live_xxxx... with your actual API key.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "letoseo": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://letoseo.com/api/mcp/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:Bearer sk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Step 3 — Restart Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop reads its config file only at startup. You must perform a full quit and relaunch — closing the window is not sufficient.

• •macOS: Press Cmd-Q or choose Claude → Quit Claude from the menu bar.
• •Windows: Right-click the Claude icon in the system tray and choose Quit.

After quitting, relaunch Claude Desktop normally.

Step 4 — Verify the connection

Start a new conversation in Claude Desktop. In the bottom-right corner of the conversation input area you should see a small slider or tools icon — this is the MCP indicator. Click it to expand the list of connected servers and tools.

Under the letoseo server entry you should see all 10 tools listed:

The 2 literal resources (letoseo://portfolio/summary, letoseo://alerts/active) and the 3 resource templates (letoseo://sites/{siteId}/metrics, letoseo://sites/{siteId}/pages, letoseo://sites/{siteId}/campaigns) will be visible in the attachment menu (paperclip icon) when you start composing a message.

Step 5 — Try a tool

In a new conversation, type the following prompt:

Claude will recognize that the orb_portfolio_health tool is the right one to call, request your confirmation (Claude Desktop shows a tool-use approval dialog before calling external servers), and then display a formatted summary of each site's health score, traffic trend, and active alert count. If you have multiple sites in your portfolio you'll see one entry per site.

Step 6 — Read a templated resource

Resource templates let Claude substitute a variable (like a site UUID) into a letoseo:// URI and call resources/read. This is distinct from calling a tool — it returns a document-style snapshot rather than a computed result.

Try this prompt (replace the UUID with one of your actual site IDs, which you can get from the orb_portfolio_health response above):

Claude will substitute the UUID into the letoseo://sites/{siteId}/metrics template, producing the concrete URI:

letoseo://sites/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001/metrics

The MCP server resolves this via a resources/read call and returns the latest metric snapshots — organic sessions, KPI trends, and period — which Claude then summarizes in plain English. This demonstrates the full resource-template flow: template discovery, variable substitution, and resources/read against a concrete letoseo:// URI.

Troubleshooting

npx -y mcp-remote --version

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" \
  https://letoseo.com/api/v1/portfolio

What's next