Wiring Pulse into an MCP Client

Audience: Pulse internals contributors and integrators wiring the pulse mcp server into an MCP-aware client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, any custom MCP host).

Pulse ships an embedded MCP server that exposes the public facade through ten tools (one per facade method plus pulse_facet_schema) and two resource schemes (pulse://*.pulse, pulse-skill://*). Wiring it into a client is a three-step process: build, configure, restart.

1. Build the binary

make build

The resulting bin/pulse must be on the client’s PATH (or referenced by absolute path in the client’s configuration).

2. Configure the client

Add an mcpServers.pulse entry to the client’s configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop, ~/.claude.json for Claude Code) running pulse mcp and exporting PULSE_DATA_DIR:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pulse": {
      "command": "/abs/path/to/bin/pulse",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PULSE_DATA_DIR": "/abs/path/to/your/cohorts"
      }
    }
  }
}

The --bind-on-open flag (default true) controls whether successful pulse_inspect calls trigger registration of session-scoped tool variants whose JSON Schemas constrain field-name parameters to the cohort’s actual fields. Pass --bind-on-open=false for clients that bind themselves:

{
  "command": "/abs/path/to/bin/pulse",
  "args": ["mcp", "--bind-on-open=false"]
}

3. Restart the client

After the client reloads its MCP configuration the Pulse tools (pulse_inspect, pulse_predict, pulse_process, …) and resources (pulse://*.pulse, pulse-skill://*) appear in the tool / resource list.

Schema-bound enums

The full configuration recipe — including the schema-bound enums section that describes the inspect trigger, the multi-file limitation (latest inspect wins), and the transport-support caveat (bind-on-inspect works on the single stdio session via post-serve AddTool / RemoveTools; there is no per-session override for a shared HTTP server) — lives in Adding an MCP tool.

Verification

bin/pulse mcp --help
bin/pulse manifest --json | jq .mcp_tools

If the client supports an MCP tool inspector, point it at the configured server and confirm ten tools and two resource schemes are exposed.