Getting Started with ByteTree MCP

Endpoint

ByteTree MCP is served from:

https://mcp.bytetree.io/mcp

POST /mcp is the Streamable HTTP MCP transport — the only authenticated endpoint. Two liveness probes are exposed outside auth: GET / returns ByteTree MCP (plain text), and GET /health returns { service: "bytetree-mcp", status: "ok", timestamp: <iso> }.

Authentication

ByteTree MCP requires a bearer token using the standard Authorization: Bearer <token> header.

Set the token in the environment your MCP client launches from:

BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY=<your token>

If the server replies with 503 { error: "API key not configured" }, the host is up but no key has been configured for this deployment — contact ByteTree if the error persists.

Auth roadmap

Today’s BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY is a shared preview key for the early-access window. Per-customer keys with scoped permissions are on the roadmap — contact ByteTree to be notified when self-service issuance ships.

Client configuration

Drop the block below into your client’s MCP config file (locations below) and restart the client.

{
"mcpServers": {
  "bytetree": {
    "type": "stdio",
    "command": "npx",
    "args": [
      "-y",
      "mcp-remote",
      "https://mcp.bytetree.io/mcp",
      "--header",
      "Authorization: Bearer ${BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY}"
    ]
  }
}
}

Important. Claude Desktop and Claude Code do not expand ${VAR} references inside MCP-server stanzas. If you paste the snippet above as-is, the client sends the literal header Authorization: Bearer ${BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY} and the server rejects it. Paste the real token value in place of ${BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY} for those two clients. The ${VAR} form is only useful when you’re wrapping the client with shell tooling that performs the substitution itself.

Claude Code

Edit ~/.claude/claude_code_config.json and paste the chosen stanza into the mcpServers block.

Claude Desktop

Edit the platform-specific config file and paste the chosen stanza into the mcpServers block:

Other MCP clients

ByteTree MCP speaks the standard MCP Streamable HTTP transport with bearer-token auth. Any client that supports the mcp-remote bridge can connect using the same npx -y mcp-remote <url> --header "Authorization: Bearer <token>" invocation shown in the snippet above. Clients that speak Streamable HTTP natively can point directly at https://mcp.bytetree.io/mcp with the same header.

Verifying the connection

Once configured, your client should list ByteTree MCP among its available servers and surface the 13 tools plus the bytetree://glossary resource. A cheap end-to-end check is to invoke summarise_dataset — it has no inputs, returns a structured payload, and confirms the auth header is being passed through.

If a tool call returns an auth error, the most common causes are:

  1. BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY not set in the environment the client launches the server from (not the shell where you type — the client’s own launcher).
  2. ${BYTETREE_MCP_API_KEY} pasted literally in Claude Desktop or Claude Code (see the callout above).
  3. The endpoint reachable but returning 503 — host is up, no key configured server-side (see Authentication).

Next steps