Using Claude Desktop

Quickstart

Use our Docker Desktop extension to automatically register and use our tools.

Open in Docker Desktop Marketplace

Manual Setup

Enable mcp_docker in your claude_desktop_config.json file using the following snippet. See the quickstart for Claude Desktop Users for more details.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp_docker": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
    	"run", "-i", "--rm", "alpine/socat", "STDIO", "TCP:host.docker.internal:8811"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Adding Tools

Install the docker/labs-ai-tools-for-devs extension to see a catalog of tools that you can install into the server.

You can also register new tool definitions by adding --register arguments to the above server definition.

        "--register", "github:docker/labs-ai-tools-for-devs?path=prompts/examples/swagger.md"

Learn more about the tool definitions being referenced here using the page on authoring the tool definitions.

Try a sample tool

Try activating thel hello world tool in our catalog (here’s the definition ) and then type “use hello docker to greet me with a joke”.

You’ll see a prompt asking if you want to run the “hello world” tool locally.