my-mcp-tasks

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) learning project with two custom task manager servers and the prebuilt GitHub MCP server.

Project structure

my-mcp-tasks/
├── reader_server.py     # MCP server: read tools (get_tasks, get_task_by_id)
├── writer_server.py     # MCP server: write tools (add_task, update_task)
├── mcp_config.json      # MCP server config for Claude
├── requirements.txt     # Python dependencies
├── tasks.db             # SQLite database (auto-created on first run)
├── .env                 # Your GitHub token (never commit this)
└── .gitignore

Related MCP server: Project Tracking MCP Server

Installation

1. Create and activate a virtual environment

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

2. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Setting up the GitHub MCP server

1. Go to GitHub → Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic)

2. Generate a new token with the scopes you need (e.g. repo, read:user)

3. Open .env and paste your token:

GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here

Registering the servers with Claude

Claude Desktop

1. Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit Config

2. Copy the contents of mcp_config.json into your Claude Desktop config

3. Replace ${workspaceFolder} with the absolute path to this project folder

4. Replace python3 with the full path to your venv Python, e.g.: /Users/yourname/Desktop/Playground/MCP-Project/venv/bin/python

5. Restart Claude Desktop

Claude Code (CLI)

Run from inside this project folder with the venv active:

claude mcp add task-reader python3 reader_server.py
claude mcp add task-writer python3 writer_server.py
claude mcp add github npx -- -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-github

Testing the custom task manager tools

Once the servers are registered, try these prompts in Claude:

Add tasks

"Add a task called 'Buy groceries' with description 'Milk, eggs, bread'" "Create a task: title 'Fix login bug', description 'Users can't log in on mobile', status 'in-progress'"

Read tasks

"Show me all my tasks" "Get task number 2"

Update tasks

"Mark task 1 as done" "Update task 3's status to 'in-progress'"

GitHub MCP server — what tools it adds

The prebuilt @modelcontextprotocol/server-github exposes tools for interacting with GitHub via Claude. You don't write any of this code — it runs via npx.

Example prompts to try:

"List all my GitHub repositories" "Show me the contents of the README in my repo my-mcp-tasks" "Create a GitHub issue in my-mcp-tasks titled 'Add due date field to tasks'" "Search GitHub for MCP server examples in Python"

How MCP works (the short version)

Each server runs as a separate process. Claude communicates with it over stdin/stdout. Claude sees only the tool names and descriptions — it uses those to decide which tool to call and with what arguments. Your handler code runs, queries the database (or calls the GitHub API), and returns a result that Claude reads and incorporates into its response.

In Python, FastMCP reads the function name as the tool name, the docstring as the description, and the type hints as the input schema — so there's no separate schema definition needed.