Claude Desktop Transport Bridge

The Claude Desktop Transport Bridge is a lightweight MCP server designed to bridge the gap between Claude Desktop and external streaming sources. By exposing a simple command‑line interface that accepts either Server‑Sent Events (SSE) or WebSocket URLs, it allows developers to route real‑time data streams directly into Claude’s model context. This solves the common problem of integrating live feeds—such as chat logs, sensor data, or real‑time analytics—into an AI assistant without needing custom adapters for each protocol.

At its core, the bridge receives a connection request, establishes the specified streaming channel, and forwards incoming messages to Claude as structured events. For SSE clients it opens a persistent HTTP connection, parsing the event stream and emitting each payload as a distinct context item. For WebSocket clients it opens a bidirectional socket, listening for messages and converting them into context updates. The result is a seamless flow of live data that Claude can consume, reason about, and respond to in real time. This is particularly valuable for developers building interactive applications where the assistant must react instantly to changing inputs.

Key features include:

• Protocol agnosticism – supports both SSE and WebSocket with a single command‑line interface.
• Low overhead – written in Node.js and built for quick deployment, making it easy to integrate into existing JavaScript workflows.
• Extensibility – the bridge can be extended with custom message parsers or context enrichments without altering its core logic.
• Cross‑platform compatibility – runs on any system with Node.js 20+, ensuring broad usability across development environments.

Typical use cases involve:

• Live chat assistants that need to ingest ongoing conversation streams from a messaging platform.
• IoT monitoring tools where sensor data is streamed via SSE and the assistant must alert users to anomalies.
• Real‑time analytics dashboards that feed live metrics into Claude for on‑the‑fly insights.
• Gaming or simulation environments where state updates are broadcast over WebSocket and the assistant offers dynamic guidance.

Integration into AI workflows is straightforward: once the bridge is running, developers can point their MCP client to the bridge’s local endpoint and declare it as a resource. Claude then treats incoming events like any other context source, allowing prompts to reference the latest data and sampling functions to generate responses that reflect current state. Because the bridge handles protocol translation internally, developers can focus on business logic rather than low‑level streaming code.

Overall, the Claude Desktop Transport Bridge provides a standardized, protocol‑neutral gateway that empowers developers to fuse live data streams into AI assistants with minimal friction. Its simplicity, combined with robust support for both SSE and WebSocket, makes it an indispensable tool for building responsive, data‑driven conversational experiences.