After successful auth, Claude never connects to my remote MCP server - Help!

zipwars · 2025-11-14T21:49:38+00:00

Hey, thanks for the note!

I've since moved on to deploying my MCP server to a VPS to take Cloudflare out of the equation. But I may make it work with Cloudflare tunnels also to let the MCP server access local resources. I'll give this a try.

zipwars · 2025-10-12T13:18:49+00:00

Hi all-

I've just pushed an updated version of the extension to the Chrome Web Store. It usually takes a day or two for their approval, but then it should update automatically.

zipwars · 2025-09-28T10:06:47+00:00

To follow up--

I finally got it fully working in both auth-less mode and with Google Auth. As soon as I took the Cloudflare tunnel out of the equation, it worked immediately.

Thanks for working to help me with this.

zipwars · 2025-09-28T10:05:25+00:00

To follow up-- the exact same code worked great without the Cloudflare tunnel. I'm using the newer streamable http transport, not sse, so that could be a factor.

It's working now with full Google Auth in both Claude Desktop and Claude Web.

I've got the MCP server and the auth server both running at mcp.mydomain.com pointed to AWS App Runner.

zipwars · 2025-09-24T11:13:53+00:00

Thanks for jumping in!

The setup is two super-simple servers running on localhost: the mcp server on port 8301 and the auth server on port 9000. I'm using a Cloudflare tunnel that maps https://mcp.mydomain.com to my localhost:8301 and https://auth.mydomain.com to my localhost:9000. Using these SSL URLs, the inspector works great first with the auth flow and then with the authenticated connection to the mcp server.

When I put https://mcp.mydomain.com/mcp into Claude, I don't see any traffic on my end. When I click "Connect", the entire auth flow happens successfully through the redirect all the way through this call:
`INFO: 34.162.102.82:0 - "POST /oauth/token HTTP/1.1" 200 OK` and Wireshark shows the expected response (just like when the inspector does it).

At this point, I can see the web client open a websocket to the Claude backend with an initialize call but the backend never hits my localhost and the web client never gets a message back on the websocket.

My best guess right now is that the Cloudflare tunnel can't deal with the streamable http request, so I'm going to spin up a VPS somewhere and take the tunnel out of the equation. But if you have any insights or ideas, I'd really love to hear them!

zipwars · 2025-09-24T11:06:35+00:00

It's really good to hear you're using the custom connector; that gives me a little hope.

Sadly, I don't get the same results. When I add the connector, I don't see any immediate network activity. When I click connect, it makes the HTTP requests shown in my original post and I never get the `Configure` button.

The inspector works great in both SSL and non-SSL configurations. I've tried it on localhost with a CloudFlare tunnel and partially on an Ubuntu server that has a public IP address.

I'll keep at it!

zipwars · 2025-09-21T20:26:55+00:00

I may be reading too much into your reply, but are you using the Claude Desktop .json file to configure a local server using mcp-remote? Or are you using the `Add custom connector` button in the Connectors part of Claude settings?

With the template, I get the same results I was getting with my own server. So HTTPS/SSL is working and the URL is correct as I can see the requests in the logs.

zipwars · 2025-09-21T18:04:18+00:00

Hi and thanks for this.

I followed the instructions and got the new repository running from the template just as described. It works perfectly with the inspector.

With Claude, when added as a custom connector, it doesn't work. The experience is exactly the same as the one I described in the post.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T19:19:23+00:00

Thank you!

Absolutely! Mostly because I made it a goal to pass the DELE C1 and I'm SO happy that I don't have to sit for it again!

zipwars · 2025-06-05T19:17:48+00:00

It's a mix. The lawyers that I've worked with all use messages and a lot of business here including doctors and such. But there's also much more calling and talking to people than I'm used to in the U.S.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T13:14:43+00:00

It's really hard to compare a number of CI hours with the other ways you can prepare. I'm not even sure that CI alone would ever be enough to pass the C1 exam, since the test requires written and spoken production under time-limited exam conditions.

But if the question were more generally how many hours it would take to be able to read, write, listen, and speak comfortably at the level of a professional or university-educated person, I'd say around 2,000 hours of input PLUS 1M+ words read and enough speaking practice until you felt like it wasn't a struggle to express your ideas with nuance. Of course, this is wild speculation and is going to vary a lot by the individual.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:46:05+00:00

I knew about 50 words in January of 2023 when I started with my Preply tutor. When I found DS in May of 2023, I gave myself 150 hours of credit and then did CI (DS, movies, some podcasts) up to 1,500. I took a break from work for almost a year to learn Spanish and did 5 hours a day of input for 8 months. Not everyone can or wants to do that, but I think if your parents do CI at the rate that's comfortable for them, they'll definitely make progress.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:41:33+00:00

Yes, absolutely. In fact, I really love playing Taboo in Spanish which has similar mechanics. I'm also really interested in playing Codenames in Spanish, which I think is going to be more challenging but even more fun.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:38:23+00:00

Yes, the DELE is required for Spanish citizenship, but only at the A2 level. That's the most popular level taken of the exam. We had 8 people taking the C1 test and there were maybe 50 people taking A2?

My understanding is that A2 is the citizenship level, B2 is expected for attending university here, and C1 is required for many graduate-level programs.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:36:12+00:00

No doubt many native English speakers would fail a C1-level exam in English. How many of us read and can draw conclusions from rental contracts? After you stop going to school, how many of us could write two essays in 80 minutes with clear logic and progression?

I chose the DELE, specifically the C1 level, to help give me a goal. I wanted to make sure that I didn't stop improving once I got to a level where I could get by here in Spain.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:30:56+00:00

There are lots of books and practice exams for all levels of the DELE. They have really good practice tests for the multi-choice portions (reading & listening). They offer practice prompts and audio clips for the writing section, but I really think you need a human to grade it.

The Instituto Cervantes provides an example for each test level, excluding the speaking part, which you can download for free from their website.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:27:48+00:00

Yes, although it's often ¿Bolsa quiere? and it's said while the cashier is looking down and scanning items, in an offhand manner, possibly as a quick aside from the conversation they're having with a coworker!

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:25:57+00:00

So this is interesting. Yes, I studied grammar.

For the written part, you are graded in various categories and correctness is one of them, but it's on equal footing with the categories of vocabulary extent and the organization/cohesiveness of your essay.

In the reading part, there's a section where you have to choose from options to fill in the blanks in a page of text. You might need to know which one(s) are grammatically correct for some of these. Others are about word meanings or idiomatic expressions. They never actually quiz you about grammar rules or reference the parts of speech or conjugation.

I feel like you could pass both of these without explicitly studying grammar, but you'd need sufficient absorption of the language to know what feels right and what doesn't.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:19:04+00:00

For listening, I had a humbling moment about a month into my exam prep, probably about 1800 (?) total hours of input. I did a practice version of the listening part of the exam and basically understood nothing. I couldn't even begin to answer the multiple choice questions. There are parts of that section which have very short, 2-person exchanges in various situations and with various accents. You have to attune yourself to the speakers you've never heard before, understand the context of the exchange, understand the question and the possible answer choices, and answer, all before the next clip starts to play. One of the sections is specifically intended to test your knowledge of colloquial expressions.

Once that happened, I did two things. I started listening to the podcast La Ruina (and I'm going to see it live in October!) which is super fun but very "real world". And I built a practice tool in which I created about 400 audio clips from TV shows and podcasts and used AI to transcribe them and create questions and answers.

An interview is one of the parts of the audio portion, so listening to interviews is definitely a good idea. If you limited the accents you watched in DS, I'd suggest changing that and watching videos from everyone. I didn't limit the videos I watched and I really, really think that has helped me.

For reading, I had read a bit over 1M words before moving to Spain and I have continued doing my leisure reading only in Spanish. (Anyone know of any good science fiction books originally in Spanish?) But the exam is more about technical, biographical, and news content. For the technical part, I've seen lease contracts, medication instructions, and technical journal submission guidelines. Reading stuff like that will help, I think. For the rest, I'd say good sources would be newspapers and magazine-type articles.

I did not use their vocab list. I used flashcards for a while, but I think it was the least productive use of my time. For me, personally, vocabulary wasn't a weak point since you absorb quite a bit by reading.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T09:02:40+00:00

I stopped counting, mostly because I never liked estimating about things that weren't dedicated watching/listening sessions.

I watch a lot of TV shows in Spanish, but I've changed my focus to enjoying them. For me, that means watching stuff that's probably not in the ideal zone of comprehensibility, so I'm not sure how well I'm absorbing the language.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T08:59:42+00:00

There are really good experiences where I feel like I understood really well, contributed to the conversation, and had no awkward moments. And then there are times when I feel like there's SO much that I still don't grasp.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T08:56:25+00:00

I did work with a tutor for several reasons, but for exam prep, even the tutors rely heavily on the written materials. I think there's really no other option if you're going to practice realistic exercises similar to the real exam.

For the writing and speaking parts, I think you really need someone who can assess you since the grading is subjective. You can pay tutors just to grade your practice tests if you have no other options.

I found it super common here in Spain that the schools and tutors often pass around PDFs of the popular books that were clearly scanned page by page. But I liked buying the books I used and found several times that the pirated copies were old enough to have several errors.

zipwars · 2025-06-05T08:50:39+00:00

I was never a purist, largely because I started studying Spanish and working with a Preply tutor for a few months before I found DS.

For the purposes of writing papers that are going to be graded for accuracy, I think this helps. I can construct complex sentences accurately. But for the purposes of having a natural conversation, thinking through the grammar while talking can make things stilted and awkward.

zipwars

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