Your First Project

MCP Express needs to be installed on either your local machine or your Server instance to start creating your MCP Servers. If installing on a Server with a custom Domain, we recommend using nginx as a reverse proxy to handle TLS. Refer to the Installation Guide for further details on how.

Start your MCP Express Project

Create your Project by running the following command.
Terminal window
```
npm create @mcpexpress my-express-mcp
```
You can adjust the project name as you wish from my-express-mcp to any name you want. The CLI result should be as shown below:
Open your Project in an Editor. You should see the following folder structure. You can add your MCP Tools in the src/tools/. Note: Do not forget to register the tools in the src/tools.ts.
- Directory.claude Claude Code Scaffolding
  - Directoryskills
    …
- Directoryscripts Contains helpful scripts
  - …
- Directorysrc
  - Directorytools contains tool code
    say-hello.ts sample tool
  - tools.ts all exported tools defined here
- package.json
- README.md
You can also utilize the available mcpexpress-builder skill to let your AI Agents write the MCP Code for you.

Provision and Deploy your Code

Launch your MCP Express Instance and navigate to the MCP Servers Page in your Installation. For local installations the page can be found under this link.
Add a new server by pressing the “+ New Server” button. And fill out the necessary information.
Create the new Server by pressing the “Create Server” button.
We recommend that you enable authentication on the server when exposing the servers into the public internet.
Package and Upload your code to Deploy.
Terminal window
```
npm run package
```
Upload the created zip file my-express-mcp.zip to the Source code Tab for your server.
Once the compilation is completed, the Tools are listed in the same section as seen below.