Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop runs local MCP servers as extensions, not plugins. AVC ships a .mcpb bundle per platform with the avc binary inside it, so there is nothing else to install and no config file to edit.

Note

A plugin’s MCP server does not run in Desktop chat — plugins contribute skills there and nothing else. The extension below is the only way Desktop gets the avc_* tools. For Claude Code, see Claude Code.

Install

Download the bundle for your platform from the latest release:

Platform	File
macOS (Apple Silicon)	avc-<version>-darwin-arm64.mcpb
macOS (Intel)	avc-<version>-darwin-amd64.mcpb
Windows	avc-<version>-windows-amd64.mcpb
Linux (x86_64)	avc-<version>-linux-amd64.mcpb
Linux (ARM)	avc-<version>-linux-arm64.mcpb

Then in Claude Desktop: Settings → Extensions → Advanced settings → Install Extension… and select the file.

Choose your project folders

On install, Desktop asks for Project folders. Pick the directories your projects live in — ~/code, say, or several at once.

AVC searches each one up to four levels deep, skipping node_modules, vendor, build, and hidden directories, and treats every directory containing .avc/ as a project. It stops at a project boundary, so branch workspaces under .avc/workspaces/ never appear as projects of their own.

This is why one install covers everything you work on: you are pointing AVC at a search root, not at a single project.

Working across projects

One project found — it is selected automatically and you can start straight away.

Several found — ask Claude to pick one:

List my AVC projects, then switch to the api one.

Claude calls avc_projects_list and avc_project_use. You can switch again mid-conversation at any time; nothing needs restarting.

A folder that is not an AVC project yet — ask Claude to set it up, and it calls avc_init. That writes .avc/ with a database, default ignore rules, and config. Claude asks before doing it, since it writes to your project root and adds .gitignore entries.

What Desktop is good for

Desktop chat has no file-editing tools, so AVC there is a review and recovery surface rather than an authoring one:

• “What did my agents do in the api project yesterday?” — avc_timeline, avc_list
• “Show me what changed between those two snapshots” — avc_diff
• “Roll that project back to before the refactor” — avc_restore, avc_undo
• “Is that branch ready to merge?” — avc_branch_diff

The authoring side lives in Claude Code or the VSCode extension, which act on the project you have open.

Upgrading

Install the new .mcpb over the old one.

Disable before uninstalling

On Windows, uninstalling while the extension is enabled can fail: the running avc.exe cannot be deleted, and Desktop removes the manifest before it discovers this — leaving an extension that reports Failed to read manifest and cannot be removed from the UI.

Disable the extension first, which stops the server, then uninstall.

To recover from that state, quit Claude Desktop completely, then delete:

• %APPDATA%\Claude\Claude Extensions\local.mcpb.trevarix-corp..avc\ (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/…)
• the matching .json in Claude Extensions Settings
• its entry in extensions-installations.json

Troubleshooting

The extension installs but does not start. Check the extension log in Desktop. spawn … ENOENT means the bundled binary could not be found — versions before 0.5.0 shipped a broken path. Upgrade to 0.5.0 or later.

Only three tools appear (avc_init, avc_projects_list, avc_project_use). Versions before 0.5.0 hid the rest until a project was selected, and clients cache the tool list. Upgrade; the full set is now advertised from the start.

No projects are found. The folders you chose contain no .avc/ directories within four levels. Either point AVC at the right folder, or ask Claude to run avc_init on one.