cognee MCP server

Installing Manually

A MCP server project

1. Clone the cognee repo

2. Install dependencies

brew install uv

cd cognee-mcp
uv sync --dev --all-extras --reinstall

3. Activate the venv with

source .venv/bin/activate

4. Add the new server to your Claude config:

The file should be located here: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/

You need to create claude_desktop_config.json in this folder if it doesn’t exist Make sure to add your paths and LLM API key to the file bellow Use your editor of choice, for example Nano:

nano claude_desktop_config.json

{
	"mcpServers": {
		"cognee": {
			"command": "/Users/{user}/cognee/.venv/bin/uv",
			"args": [
        "--directory",
        "/Users/{user}/cognee/cognee-mcp",
        "run",
        "cognee"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ENV": "local",
        "TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISM": "false",
        "LLM_API_KEY": "sk-"
      }
		}
	}
}

Restart your Claude desktop.

Installing via Smithery

To install Cognee for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install cognee --client claude

Define cognify tool in server.py Restart your Claude desktop.

To use debugger, run:

mcp dev src/server.py

Open inspector with timeout passed:

http://localhost:5173?timeout=120000

To apply new changes while developing cognee you need to do:

1. poetry lock in cognee folder
2. uv sync --dev --all-extras --reinstall
3. mcp dev src/server.py