MCP setup - Neural Draft

@neuraldraft/mcp is a stdio MCP server published on npm. Every supported client spawns it as a local process and talks JSON-RPC over stdio. You only need three things:

Node 18.18 or newer.
A Neural Draft API key (ndsk_live_... or ndsk_test_...).
Your editor of choice.

For best results, mint a separate API key per machine — your audit log will show “claude-code-laptop”, “cursor-mac-mini” and so on rather than a single ambiguous “personal”.

Claude Code

The fastest path. The CLI handles everything:

claude mcp add neural-draft \
  --env NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY=ndsk_live_... \
  -- npx -y @neuraldraft/mcp

That writes the server config to ~/.config/claude-code/mcp.json (or your platform’s equivalent). To verify, restart Claude Code and run /mcp — you should see neural-draft listed under “Connected servers”. If you’d rather edit the config by hand:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "neural-draft": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@neuraldraft/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY": "ndsk_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Cursor reads .cursor/mcp.json either at the workspace root (project-scoped) or at ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "neural-draft": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@neuraldraft/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY": "ndsk_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Reload the workspace. Open the AI panel and confirm neural-draft appears under “MCP”. When you ask Cursor to generate a section, it’ll auto-call register_component.

Putting an API key in a workspace file checked into git is a footgun. Use the global ~/.cursor/mcp.json for personal keys, or a .cursor/mcp.json with an env var indirection (e.g. "NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY": "${env:NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY}") and .gitignore the file.

Continue

Add the server to ~/.continue/config.yaml:

experimental:
  modelContextProtocolServers:
    - transport:
        type: stdio
        command: npx
        args: ["-y", "@neuraldraft/mcp"]
      env:
        NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY: ndsk_live_...

Reload Continue. The Neural Draft tools become available to any model you’ve configured.

Lovable, v0, Bolt — the workaround

These hosted tools don’t yet support MCP. For now, paste the system prompt at frameworks/lovable into your build prompt — it teaches the model the same conventions the MCP server enforces. When Lovable / v0 / Bolt add MCP support, this server will work as-is.

Multiple projects on one machine

The cleanest pattern is one server entry per project, named for the project. The AI client UI shows them separately, so you can flip between projects without changing env vars:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "neural-draft-acme": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@neuraldraft/mcp"],
      "env": { "NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY": "ndsk_live_acme..." }
    },
    "neural-draft-bigcorp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@neuraldraft/mcp"],
      "env": { "NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY": "ndsk_live_bigcorp..." }
    }
  }
}

When asking the AI to “use Neural Draft”, reference the entry by name — e.g. “use the neural-draft-acme tools”. Most clients pick automatically based on which server has the relevant tool, but explicit is better for clarity.

Environment variables

The server reads these env vars (the NEURAL_DRAFT_* aliases are also accepted for backwards compatibility):

Variable	Required	Default
`NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY`	Yes	—
`NEURALDRAFT_API_URL`	No	`https://api.neuraldraft.io/v1`
`NEURALDRAFT_PROJECT_ID`	No	(resolved from the API key)
`NEURALDRAFT_DISPLAY_NAME`	No	(auto-generated)

Override NEURALDRAFT_API_URL only when pointing at a self-hosted API or our staging environment (https://api.staging.neuraldraft.io/v1).

Verifying it works

After install, ask the AI:

“Read the Neural Draft brand context for this project.”

You should see the AI invoke the brand://current resource. If it doesn’t, the server didn’t connect. Common causes:

Symptom	Fix
`npx: command not found`	Install Node 18.18+. `node --version`.
Server starts then crashes immediately	Check the API key prefix; it must match `ndsk_(live	test)_…`. The server validates on boot.
AI doesn’t see the tools	Most clients require a workspace reload after editing the MCP config. Restart the editor.
Cursor shows “neural-draft” but no tools	Stale Node cache. `npx -y @neuraldraft/mcp@latest` to force re-download.
`429` on every tool call	You’re inside a tight loop. Throttle your AI’s session, or upgrade to a higher rate limit.

If none of those: run the server manually with the inspector to see the raw JSON-RPC transcript:

NEURALDRAFT_API_KEY=ndsk_test_... npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector \
  npx -y @neuraldraft/mcp

Open http://localhost:6274 and try brand://current directly.

What you get next

Tools and resources

The full reference: every tool, every resource, every parameter.

Snippets

Drop-in framework integrations once you’ve got the AI generating Neural Draft-native code.

​Claude Code

​Cursor

​Continue

​Lovable, v0, Bolt — the workaround

​Multiple projects on one machine

​Environment variables

​Verifying it works

​What you get next

Tools and resources

Snippets

Claude Code

Cursor

Continue

Lovable, v0, Bolt — the workaround

Multiple projects on one machine

Environment variables

Verifying it works

What you get next