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Containerized BioMCP with Claude Desktop for Mac: Step-by-Step Tutorial

This tutorial will guide you through setting up BioMCP as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Claude Desktop for Mac, while having biomcp fully dockerized.

Prerequisites

Steps

Create a file called Dockerfile in a directory of your choice with this content

FROM python:3.13-slim AS production
RUN apt-get update && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
WORKDIR /app
RUN pip install biomcp-python
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["biomcp","run"]

then in the same directory run the command docker build -t biomcp .

Finally, enter the directory of Claude Desktop configs cd "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Claude/"

and edit the file claude_desktop_config.json adding the biomcp server

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "biomcp": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "biomcp:latest"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

That's it; you should now have biomcp, fully containerized, available in your Macos Claude Desktop Application