Use Skilled Rabbit inside Claude Desktop

Screenshots pending — placeholders in place. Real captures land in Phase 137 beta smoke.

Use Skilled Rabbit inside Claude Desktop — Anthropic's native macOS / Windows app. Claude Desktop discovers the Skilled Rabbit MCP server through the same OAuth handshake the shim uses elsewhere; you click one button and the connection lands.

What you need

You need a paid Claude Pro plan (Skilled Rabbit Beta also works with Claude Team Standard) and a Skilled Rabbit account with at least one active training enrollment. Free Claude tiers cannot sustain MCP usage at training cadence.

Add the connector

The primary way to connect is to copy the Skilled Rabbit connector URL and paste it into Claude Desktop → Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Approve, sign in once via OAuth, and Finney is wired. (If your machine has the claude:// handler registered, the orange button can also foreground Claude Desktop for you — but the copy-and-paste route works on every build, including the newer Cowork builds.)

In-app connect flow (W1-10 — operator-confirmed verbatim copy)

This section is the canonical Rule-9 source for the in-app /chat install-and-connect card (components/chat/chat-install-card.tsx). The card renders this copy verbatim. Do not paraphrase. The connector URL in step 4 is env-aware (https://beta.skilledrabbit.ai/api/mcp on beta, https://skilledrabbit.ai/api/mcp on PROD) — the card injects it; this document shows the beta value for reference.

Pre-step — install branch

Before the connect screen the learner is asked:

Did you already install [tool]?

• Yes → go straight to the connector steps below.
• No → show the install instructions: a button linking to the tool's install page that opens in a new tab. The canonical Claude Desktop install page is claude.ai/download. After the learner installs, an "installation done, continue" affordance returns them to the connector steps below.

Claude Desktop connector steps

1. Open Claude Desktop then customize then connectors
2. Click [+] then add custom connector
3. Paste this Name: Skilled Rabbit
4. Paste this URL: https://beta.skilledrabbit.ai/api/mcp
5. Connect
6. A new window opens where you approve authorization of Skilled Rabbit, click authorize
7. Start Claude Desktop
8. Claude is now connected
9. Open a chat window in Claude Desktop and paste: Hi Finney, I'm ready to start my Skilled Rabbit training.
10. Finney is now connected in your AI tool

Why this exact phrase (Phase 146.13 RW-1): the step-9 line is the first thing the learner says in the AI tool after connecting, so it has to route the host to Skilled Rabbit's coach — not to a shell action. Naming Finney biases the host toward the Skilled Rabbit / Finney MCP tools rather than reading "start" as "start the dev server"; the "…start my Skilled Rabbit training." clause routes the turn to the first-touch path. The bare "Start Skilled Rabbit" is retired — it was being read as "start the dev server" in coding-agent surfaces (Cowork / Claude Code in a repo). This phrase is the canonical Rule-9 trigger; mirror it verbatim wherever the in-app card or the per-client docs render it.

Surface-aware first-touch (D-04/D-10)

The same step-9 trigger works on every surface, but WHERE the learner pastes it varies by the AI tool they chose. This is the canonical Rule-9 copy for each surface — do NOT invent connector copy elsewhere without authoring it here first.

• Claude Desktop / claude.ai (consumer chat surfaces): paste the trigger directly in a chat window, exactly as step 9 above.
• Cowork / Claude Code (repo coding-agent surfaces): FIRST open a FRESH consumer chat for the first-touch handoff — a coding-agent session in a repo is more likely to read "start" as a build/dev command. Show the learner this nudge near the start-trigger:

  Tip: for the first hello, open a fresh chat with Finney (not your code/repo session) and paste the line above. If the learner pastes it in-repo anyway, the same trigger still works — it names Finney + training intent, so it is hardened, not surface-locked.

• ChatGPT Desktop / M365 Copilot: paste the trigger in a new conversation after the connector is added.

Install

1. Copy the connector URL and add it in Claude Desktop

Click Copy connector URL at the top of this tab, then in Claude Desktop go to Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector and paste it. (If the claude:// handler is registered on your machine, the same button can also foreground Claude Desktop for you — but the copy-and-paste route works on every build.)

2. Approve the connector

Click Add connector in Claude Desktop's confirmation dialog.

3. Sign in

Claude Desktop opens the Skilled Rabbit OAuth page in your browser. Sign in with the same account you use on skilledrabbit.ai. Approve the requested scope.

4. Verify — and choose Always allow

Back in Claude Desktop, type /finney and press Enter, then run /finney progress. The first time Skilled Rabbit runs a tool, Claude Desktop shows a permission dialog with two choices: Allow once and Always allow.

Choose "Always allow". This is the single most important click in the whole setup. If you pick "Allow once", Claude Desktop stops and asks for permission again at every checkpoint — turning each mission into a string of interruptions. "Always allow" gives Finney standing permission, so the training runs uninterrupted.

Once you've approved, /finney progress replies with your current week, stage, XP, and rank. If you see that, the connection is live and you're done.

Screenshot pending — the "Allow once / Always allow" permission dialog.

Using a newer (Cowork) Claude Desktop? Recent Claude Desktop builds don't load custom MCP servers from the config file — so the connector above is the path that works. If you ever used a terminal command to set this up and nothing happened, switch to the connector.

Optional: unlock the full /finney toolkit

The connector gives you Skilled Rabbit's sr_ tools and OAuth-grounded coaching right away. When you want the full /finney command set (hints, checkpoints, reflect, and more) as native slash-commands, add the Skilled Rabbit Cowork plugin — it bundles the same connection plus the full Finney toolkit. Full walkthrough: /docs/cowork-install.

On Claude Desktop, Finney coaches reactively — ask for a hint, run a checkpoint, or open a reflection whenever you want. (Automatic "I noticed you're stuck" nudges are a Claude Code feature; on Desktop you drive the coaching, and the /finney plugin gives you every command on demand.)