Set up Thing in Claude Desktop

Turn the report in your Claude Desktop chat into a link you can open outside the conversation. Use Thing’s local MCP server to publish HTML or Markdown directly from the chat.

Already connected? Publish your first artifact

Connect thing to Claude Desktop

Install Node.js LTS if npx --version does not work. In your computer’s terminal, sign in once:

npx -y @unravel-tech/thing@latest login

In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Developer → Edit Config. Merge this entry into mcpServers; keep any existing servers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "thing": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@unravel-tech/thing@latest", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Quit and reopen Claude Desktop. Ask it to call Thing’s whoami tool to check the account.

This is a local desktop integration, not a remote connector URL for claude.ai. If the server cannot find npx, use its absolute path in the command field. Publish chat output with inline content and a filename; a path inside Claude’s sandbox is not a file on your computer. Local MCP setup reference.

Publish your first artifact

Paste this into Claude Desktop. It creates a real artifact; no existing file is required.

Your first-publish prompt

Use Thing’s whoami tool to confirm my account and team. Create a small self-contained HTML report, let me review it, then call push_artifact with inline content, filename first-thing.html, and name first-thing. Omit visibility to use the workspace default. Return the URL and its visibility.

The agent should return a Thing URL. Open it while signed in and confirm the report is there. Check Share before sending it: personal artifacts default private, and team artifacts default team-visible. Invite a person or choose the visibility you need.

For your next report, use the same name to add a version at the same URL.

Something not working?

Check npx --version, then run npx -y @unravel-tech/thing@latest whoami on the machine running your agent. If sign-in is missing, run npx -y @unravel-tech/thing@latest login there and restart the agent. For MCP, confirm Thing’s tools appear before asking it to publish. Never put credentials in a prompt or a committed config.

Try the direct terminal command or upgrade an older CLI.

Not using Claude Desktop for everything?

The same artifacts work from every other agent, and from CI. See artifacts for any coding agent for Claude Code, Aider, Cline, shell tools, and pipelines, and for why a page that outlives the session it came from is worth the extra step of publishing.

Check your published artifacts Choose another setup