Time MCP server

Time-MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI agents to access current time and date information. This enables agents to fulfill time-dependent tasks, such as checking the time in different timezones or working with time-relative tasks.

Installation and Setup

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the uv package manager installed on your system.

For Claude Desktop App

To add the Time-MCP server to the Claude Desktop App:

1. Download or clone the time_mcp_server.py file to your local system

2. Edit the Claude Desktop App configuration file located at:

   ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   

3. Add the Time-MCP server to the configuration:

   {
       "mcpServers": {
           "time": {
               "command": "uv",
               "args": [
                   "--directory",
                   "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/PARENT/FOLDER/time-mcp",
                   "run",
                   "time_mcp_server.py"
               ]
           }
       }
   }
   

4. Save the file and restart the Claude Desktop App

Note: You may need to use the full path to the uv executable in the command field. You can find this by running which uv on macOS/Linux or where uv on Windows.

For Custom Clients or Linux

Since Time-MCP is an STDIO-based MCP server, you can implement a client following the pattern in the official MCP client tutorial at https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/client. Use time_mcp_server.py instead of the example weather server.

Available Tools

Time-MCP provides two main tools:

get_datetime

Returns a formatted date and time string in the specified timezone (defaults to UTC if none is specified).

get_current_unix_timestamp

Returns the current time as a UNIX timestamp.

Usage Examples

With Time-MCP configured, you can ask Claude questions like:

• "What time is it in Tokyo?"
• "What's the current date and time?"
• "What will the weather be 3 hours from now?"

The agent will be able to access the current time data to provide accurate time-aware responses, enabling it to handle time-dependent tasks more effectively.

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 "time" '{"command":"uv","args":["--directory","/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/PARENT/FOLDER/time-mcp","run","time_mcp_server.py"]}'

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": {
        "time": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/PARENT/FOLDER/time-mcp",
                "run",
                "time_mcp_server.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

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": {
        "time": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/PARENT/FOLDER/time-mcp",
                "run",
                "time_mcp_server.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect