I’ve previously written two MCP-related posts — using Cursor for Code Review and a Cursor × Figma technical investigation. The biggest takeaway wasn’t how powerful MCP is, but how tedious the configuration is.
Every time you add an MCP Server, you have to manually edit claude_desktop_config.json, .cursor/mcp.json, .vscode/mcp.json… and the formats aren’t even the same. As my collection of AI tools keeps growing and each addition means editing multiple files, I got fed up.
So I built MCP Dock — a desktop app that unifies configuration management.
Project: OldJii/mcp-dock
Demo
Features
Store: Aggregates 9,200+ MCP Servers — browsable, searchable, sortable by Stars. Plus 3,100+ AI Skills.
One-Click Install: Pick a Server, select which clients to install it on, fill in the parameters, click install. The configuration is automatically written to each client’s config file. Currently supports Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Windsurf, Zed, TRAE, TRAE CN, Kiro, Opencode, JetBrains, Antigravity, and OpenClaw — 14 clients in total.
Inspector: No need to spin up an IDE just to test a Server. The built-in Inspector lets you connect to a Server and inspect its Tools and Resources responses.
History: Every config change is automatically backed up. If something breaks, view the diff and roll back with one click.
Configuration Differences
Only after building this did I realize how varied the config formats are across clients — despite everyone supporting MCP:
| Client | Format | Config Path | Server Field |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | JSON | ~/.cursor/mcp.json | mcpServers |
| VS Code | JSONC | ~/.vscode/mcp.json | servers |
| Claude Code | JSON | ~/.claude.json | mcpServers |
| OpenClaw | JSON5 | ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json | mcp.servers |
| Windsurf | JSON | ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json | mcpServers |
| JetBrains | JSON | Per-IDE config directories | mcpServers |
JSON, JSON5, JSONC — three formats mixed together, with inconsistent field paths. An abstraction layer handles this internally.
JetBrains is even trickier — it’s not one tool but a family of IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, PyCharm, GoLand…), each with different config directories, and both CE and Ultimate editions. MCP Dock scans for all JetBrains instances on the system and manages them uniformly.
Local-First
Config files, API keys, and history all stay local — nothing goes to the cloud. MCP configs frequently contain API keys and tokens; these should never leave the user’s machine.
Store data is served via CDN for fast loading globally. No account system, no login required.
Installation
# macOSbrew install --cask OldJii/tap/mcp-dock
# Or download manually# https://github.com/OldJii/mcp-dock/releasesSupports macOS (Intel / Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux (AppImage / deb).