I moved my MCP servers from Claude to Codex. Here's the cheat sheet

Posted on Nov 2 • Originally published at pickaplugin.com

Full disclosure up front: I run PickAPlugin, a free directory of ChatGPT and Codex plugins, and I built a small converter while doing this move myself. You don't need it, though. Everything below works by hand.

Claude Desktop and Cursor keep MCP servers in JSON. Codex keeps them in TOML, in ~/.codex/config.toml (or.codex/config.toml inside a trusted project). The servers themselves don't change at all. Only the config format does.

{ "mcpServers": { "context7": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "-y", "@upstash/context7-mcp" ] } }} Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode And the same server in Codex's TOML:

[ mcp_servers. context7 ] command = "npx" args = [ "-y", "@upstash/context7-mcp" ] Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Each server becomes its own [mcp_servers.NAME] table. The CLI and the IDE extension both read the same file.

codex mcp add context7 -- npx -y @upstash/context7-mcp codex mcp list Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Where the old config lives macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json If you have a lot of them Converting one or two by hand is fine. If you've got ten, I put a paste-and-convert page here: MCP config converter. It runs in your browser and nothing gets uploaded. It goes the other way too, TOML back to JSON.

The longer version of this guide is on pickaplugin.com.