Gauntlet Incept MCP server

Gauntlet-Incept is a system designed to generate high-quality educational content for K-8 students, tailored to their knowledge levels and interests. It produces educational articles and question banks for specific subject areas, with integration options for Claude Desktop through a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.

MCP Server Overview

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) server allows Claude Desktop to interact directly with the Gauntlet Incept system. Through this integration, Claude can generate, tag, and grade educational content without requiring separate API calls.

Prerequisites

Before setting up the MCP server, ensure you have:

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• Git
• Access to the RDS PostgreSQL database
• SSH key for database connection (if connecting through SSH tunnel)
• Docker and Docker Compose (optional)

Installation

Standard Installation

Follow these steps to install the MCP server:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/Gauntlet-Incept.git
   

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd Gauntlet-Incept
   

3. Install dependencies:

   npm install
   

4. Create your environment configuration:

   cp .env.example .env
   

5. Edit the .env file with your database credentials and other configuration settings

Docker Installation

For a containerized installation:

1. Clone the repository as shown above
2. Set up your environment variables
3. Build and start the containers:

   docker-compose up -d
   

Running the MCP Server

Standard Method

Start the MCP server with:

npm run mcp

The server will be available at http://localhost:3001 by default.

Docker Method

When using Docker, the MCP server is automatically started as part of the container setup and will be available at http://localhost:3001.

Configuration

The MCP server connects to an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL instance with these default settings:

• Host: alphacommoncrawl-core-reboot.cluster-caeuiwckzo1a.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com
• Port: 5432
• Database: core
• Username: postgres

The password should be configured in your .env file for security.

Using with Claude Desktop

To use the MCP server with Claude Desktop:

1. Ensure the MCP server is running
2. Open Claude Desktop
3. Navigate to Settings > Model Context Protocol
4. Enter the MCP server URL (http://localhost:3001 by default)
5. Claude can now interact with the Gauntlet Incept system to:
   • Generate educational articles and questions
   • Tag content with appropriate metadata (subject, grade, standards)
   • Grade content against quality standards

API Functionality

Through the MCP server, you can access these core functions:

Question Management

• Tag questions with subject, grade, standard, lesson, and difficulty
• Grade questions against quality standards
• Generate questions based on tags or example questions

Article Management

• Tag articles with subject, grade, standard, and lesson
• Grade articles against quality standards
• Generate articles based on tags or example articles

Troubleshooting

• If you experience connection issues, verify your database credentials and ensure your environment variables are correctly set
• For SSH tunnel connections, confirm your SSH key is properly configured
• Check port availability if the server fails to start (default port is 3001)

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "gauntlet-incept" '{"command":"npm","args":["run","mcp"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "gauntlet-incept": {
            "command": "npm",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "gauntlet-incept": {
            "command": "npm",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect