Free MCP server: give Claude real tools on your Mac in 5 minutes

If you want a free MCP server that gives Claude something real to do, ReDock is a native macOS app (free) that exposes an entire local web stack as MCP tools on localhost:47200. Install the app, connect Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor, and the assistant can create sites, author WordPress content, share previews, and deploy — with no terminal work and no API keys.

Most “free MCP server” lists point you at demo servers: a weather tool, a calculator, a filesystem reader. Useful for learning the protocol, less useful for shipping anything. Here is the faster path.

What “free MCP server” usually gets you

The typical starter server does one small thing. You clone a repo, install dependencies, edit a JSON config file, restart your client, and Claude can now tell you the temperature in Lisbon. That is a fine hello-world, but the setup cost is real: Node versions, config paths, stdio quirks. And at the end, the model still can’t do your actual work.

A server is only as interesting as its tools. If you’re new to the protocol itself, start with What is MCP? — the short version is that an MCP server publishes tools, and a client like Claude calls them.

What ReDock’s server gives Claude instead

ReDock runs real local websites on your Mac — WordPress, headless WordPress, Astro, Next.js, Node.js, Bun, PHP, MySQL — each at a real https://name.test domain with a locally trusted certificate. The whole app is one MCP server, and its tools cover the full lifecycle:

Create and control sites. Claude can create a site, start it, stop it, and read honest status — state mapped from real processes, never invented.
Author WordPress content properly. Not raw HTML dumped into a page: real Gutenberg blocks and patterns, so what the model writes is what an editor sees.
Magic-login to wp-admin. No password hunting; the tool opens an authenticated session.
Share. Unlimited unlisted QuickShare URLs plus named subdomains under redock.xyz, via Cloudflare tunnels.
Deploy. One-click deploy to Cloudflare Workers static assets, with custom domain attach.

There is also a built-in agent and a local-LLM catalog, so you can run models locally without any API key at all.

The 5-minute setup

Install ReDock. Download the app (macOS 12+; it’s Tauri + Rust, not Electron, so it’s light). The install guide covers it.
Open it. The MCP server is part of the app — it listens on localhost:47200. Nothing to compile, no JSON file to hand-edit inside the app.
Connect your client. Point Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor at the endpoint. The exact steps per client are in the MCP docs, and we have a dedicated walkthrough for Claude Desktop.
Ask for something. “Create a WordPress site called portfolio and write a homepage” is a reasonable first prompt.

If even that feels like setup, it barely is — we wrote up why in Easy MCP setup.

What “free” means here, precisely

Honesty matters more than a headline. ReDock is free: the local sites, the MCP server, the built-in agent, the local-LLM catalog, sharing, and Cloudflare Workers deploys are all included. The paid part is ReDock Web, for the live client sites you look after, and nothing in this post depends on it. No credit card, no usage meter on tool calls, no API keys required for the local models.

The other cost people forget is model access. Because ReDock ships a local-LLM catalog, you can pair the free server with a free local model and have a working agent stack with zero recurring spend.

Free demo server vs. free working server

A quick way to decide what to install first: ask what you want Claude to produce this week. If the answer is “an understanding of MCP,” a tiny stdio demo server is a fine teacher. If the answer is “a website,” “a client preview,” or “a deployed page,” you want tools that reach those outcomes — site creation, content authoring, sharing, deploying. That’s the gap ReDock fills, and it’s why the first prompt after setup can be an actual deliverable rather than a weather check.

FAQ

Is ReDock actually free?

Yes — free: the full local app, MCP server, sharing, and deploys. The paid part is ReDock Web, which is a different thing: the dashboard for live WordPress sites you look after for clients.

Does it work with clients other than Claude?

Yes. MCP is an open protocol; Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client can connect to localhost:47200.

Do I need Node, Docker, or a terminal?

No. ReDock is a native macOS app; the server and the site runtimes are built in. There is no Windows version.

Give Claude tools that produce websites instead of weather reports — download ReDock.