Tinderbox MCP works in Claude Chat but not in Claude Cowork

AI
1

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing an interesting issue with the Tinderbox MCP integration and wanted to check if others have encountered this as well.

What works:

  • Tinderbox MCP is properly connected and functioning in Claude Chat (claude.ai)
  • I can successfully read from and interact with my Tinderbox files through the MCP connection
  • The connector shows as “connected” in the interface

What doesn’t work:

  • The same Tinderbox MCP connection does not work in Claude Cowork
  • Even though the Tinderbox connector appears in the connector list and shows as connected, Claude in Cowork mode cannot see or access any Tinderbox tools
  • No Tinderbox-specific MCP tools are available to Claude when running in Cowork mode

Setup:

  • Using the official Tinderbox MCP server
  • Claude Desktop app with both Chat and Cowork modes
  • Same configuration file for both modes

Question: Has anyone else noticed this discrepancy? Since Cowork is still relatively new, there might not be many users testing it yet. However, if anyone has experience with Claude Code and Tinderbox, I’d be very interested to hear about it – the experiences and solutions from Claude Code might also apply to Claude Cowork, as both seem to handle MCP connectors differently than Claude Chat mode.

It appears that not all MCP connectors are equally available across Claude’s different modes (Chat vs. Code vs. Cowork), which is somewhat unexpected since they should theoretically use the same infrastructure.

Any insights or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Regards
andreas

2

Claude Code needs a separate install, which is being added to the next backstage release. You’ll need to turn off AI Integration, and then turn it on again.

3

turning off AI Integration applies to the next Backstage release or is the workaround for the current public release?

4

This Terminal command will add Claude Desktop’s MCPs, including Tinderbox’s, to Claude Code:

claude mcp add-from-claude-desktop -s user

Cheers!

2 Likes
5

Claude Code can use Tinderbox from the command line, but not (at present) from the desktop application. I don’t think Cowork uses MCP at all.