Sharing MCP Servers with Your Team via .mcp.json

When you want your whole team to share the same MCP servers, project scope is the answer. It stores servers in a .mcp.json file at the root of the repo, and you commit that file to git.

Add a project-scoped server

Pass --scope project when you add the server:

claude mcp add --scope project --transport http notion https://mcp.notion.com/mcp

This writes an entry into .mcp.json instead of your personal config. A file with a couple of servers looks roughly like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notion": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.notion.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Commit it

Because .mcp.json lives in the repo, anyone who clones the project and opens Claude Code gets the same servers with no extra setup. That's the point: the integrations travel with the code, so a new teammate is productive on day one.

Keep secrets out

Don't paste API keys straight into .mcp.json, since it's checked into git. Instead use environment variable expansion like ${API_KEY} in the file, and let each person supply the real value from their own environment. The next article covers this in detail.

Confirm what everyone sees

After pulling changes, run claude mcp list to see the servers you've picked up, and use /mcp in a session to check they connect. If a teammate reports a missing server, make sure .mcp.json was actually committed and pushed. Sharing servers this way keeps your team on one consistent set of tools without passing setup instructions around by hand.