Connect AI Clients

MCPFirewall works with any AI client that uses MCP servers. It automatically discovers clients installed on your machine.

Supported clients

• Claude Desktop (macOS, Linux, Windows)
• Claude Code (all platforms)
• Cursor (all platforms)
• VS Code / Copilot (all platforms, including Insiders and VSCodium)
• Windsurf (all platforms)
• Cline (all platforms)

On Linux, MCPFirewall also checks Flatpak and Snap installation paths for VS Code and Claude Desktop.

Setup

Go to the Integrations page. Each detected client appears as a card:

• Detected: found on your machine but not yet configured. Click Set up.
• Active: configured and running with servers.
• Installed (empty): configured but no servers yet.

When you click Set up, MCPFirewall:

1. Reads the client’s existing MCP config file
2. Replaces each server’s direct command with mcpfw shim --server <id>
3. Registers each server with the gateway
4. Saves a backup of the original config (.bak file)

After setup, all MCP traffic from that client flows through the gateway. The client does not know MCPFirewall exists. From its perspective, it is still talking to MCP servers normally.

Custom integrations

If your client is not in the auto-detection list, click Add Custom Integration. Provide the client’s name, the path to its MCP config file, and the file format.

Restarting your AI client

AI clients load their MCP server list at startup. Any configuration change (setting up a client, installing a server, removing a server, or changing shim settings) requires you to restart the AI client before it takes effect.

MCPFirewall shows a yellow banner on the Integrations page listing which clients need a restart. The banner clears automatically once the client reconnects after restarting.

If a newly installed server does not appear in your AI client, restart the client first. This is the most common reason for “missing” servers.

Ejecting a client

To disconnect a client from MCPFirewall, open the overflow menu on its card and select Eject. You can:

• Restore config file: revert to the backed-up original config
• Export plaintext secrets: write vault secrets back to the config in plaintext (if restoring)

After ejecting, the client connects directly to MCP servers with no governance.

Client defaults (Advanced Mode)

Each client can have a default ruleset. This applies to all tool calls from that client unless a project-scoped ruleset overrides it. Set the default from the Rulesets page or from the CLI:

mcpfw ruleset apply "strict" --client claude-desktop