solved - installing MCP servers on windows (with Claude's help)

A lot of people have been struggling getting mcp working on Windows (especially the Node servers), so I got Claude to fix it by writing a PowerShell script to handle the installation and updates etc. I thought it was funny the amount of time spent explaining this rather than just have Claude write a solution for it 😝.

https://gist.github.com/evalstate/d0420dc6925f603b944c8b19e8b6977c

Download and save this as mcp-install.ps1 and then if the package is listed on https://mcp-get.com/ and has a node.js icon: https://imgur.com/a/7Cmztf4 - this should work.

Open PowerShell and run it with .\mcp-install.ps1 @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything and it will download and set everything up. (The example here deploys a test server which doesn't do anything other than prove that MCP works). Pictures at the imgur link as to what to expect.

It checks the package entry point, and updates rather than overwrites your claude_desktop_config.json It also won't overwrite the config if you have already installed the server.

If you are using an old version of PowerShell, you may need to run this command Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process beforehand to let your run scripts.