How do I connect Claude to Traverse?

You connect Claude Desktop to Traverse by adding the Traverse MCP server to your Claude Desktop config. Claude discovers your registered capabilities as tools on the next restart and calls them with full contract validation on every invocation.

Step 1 — Register capabilities

Make sure you have at least one capability registered in your local Traverse registry:

traverse capability register \
  --contract my_capability.toml \
  --wasm target/wasm32-wasi/release/my_capability.wasm

Step 2 — Add to Claude Desktop config

Open your Claude Desktop MCP config file. On macOS it lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json. Add the Traverse server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "traverse": {
      "command": "traverse",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

Step 3 — Restart Claude Desktop

Quit and reopen Claude Desktop. The app starts the Traverse MCP server as a subprocess. When you open a new conversation, your capabilities appear in Claude's tool list. Claude can call them directly in response to your prompts.

What Claude sees

Each registered capability appears as a tool with the name from your contract's [capability] section, the description you wrote, and the full input schema. Claude uses the schema to construct valid inputs. If it sends an invalid input, the runtime returns a structured error Claude can read and correct from.

See how the MCP server works for more detail on the protocol, and the MCP setup guide for a full walkthrough.