When Something Goes Wrong
This is a member-only chapter. Log in with your Signal Over Noise membership email to continue.
Log in to readModule 2 · Section 8 of 10
When Something Goes Wrong
Claude doesn’t see the tools. First check you actually restarted (not just a new chat). Then check your settings.json syntax — JSON is picky about commas and quotes. Copy the JSON into a validator if you’re not sure.
npx download errors. If your network blocks npm or you’re offline, npx can’t download the package on first run. The fix is to install it globally first: npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem, then use node as the command pointing to the installed binary instead of npx.
Permission errors. If Claude tries to read a directory and gets a permission error, check that the directory paths in your config are ones your user account can read. Also check you haven’t specified a path that doesn’t exist.
Claude says it has the tools but they fail. Usually a path issue in the config. Double-check the directory paths match what’s actually on your machine, including capitalisation.