Installing Manually

A MCP server project

1. Clone the cognee repo

2. Install dependencies

pip install uv

brew install postgresql

brew install rust

cd cognee-mcp
uv sync --dev --all-extras

3. Activate the venv with

source .venv/bin/activate

4. Add the new server to your Claude config:

The file should be located here: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/ You need to create claude_desktop_config.json in this folder if it doesn't exist

{
	"mcpServers": {
		"cognee": {
			"command": "/Users/{user}/cognee/.venv/bin/uv",
			"args": [
        "--directory",
        "/Users/{user}/cognee/cognee-mcp",
        "run",
        "cognee"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ENV": "local",
        "TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISM": "false",
        "LLM_API_KEY": "sk-"
      }
		},
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/Users/{user}/Desktop",
        "/Users/{user}/Projects"
      ]
    }
	}
}

Restart your Claude desktop.

Installing via Smithery

To install Cognee for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install cognee --client claude

Define cognify tool in server.py Restart your Claude desktop.