← Home · March 18, 2026 · 8 min read

The Complete Guide to MCP Servers for Claude

Everything you need to know about Model Context Protocol (MCP): how it works, how to set it up, and which servers are actually worth using.

What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard from Anthropic that lets AI models like Claude connect to external tools and data sources. Instead of being limited to its training data, Claude can use an MCP server to browse the web, run code, query databases, and more — in real time.

How MCP Works

An MCP server exposes a set of "tools" — functions the AI can call. When Claude needs to do something (scrape a URL, get a crypto price, send an email), it calls the tool, the MCP server executes it, and returns the result to Claude.

Claude → requests tool "web-scrape"
MCP Server → fetches URL, returns markdown
Claude → uses content to answer your question

Setting Up Arch Tools MCP

Arch Tools is a single MCP server that gives Claude 63 production tools instantly.

Claude Desktop Config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arch-tools": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@deesmo/arch-tools-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ARCH_TOOLS_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

What Tools Are Available

63 tools across 13 categories: web scraping, AI generation (Claude/GPT/Grok/Gemini), crypto data, OCR, NLP, browser automation, email sending, PDF extraction, and more.

Pricing

Free tier: 100 credits. Each tool call costs 1-20 credits depending on compute. Credits refresh monthly. Or pay per-call with USDC via x402 — agents don't need an account.