# Connect a Client

Point an MCP client at KuraDB over stdio, or enable and call the streamable HTTP endpoint on the daemon.

## Connect over stdio

Point any MCP client at the `kura` binary:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kuradb": {
      "command": "kura",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}
```

The client then sees `list_rag` and `search_rag`. `kura mcp` opens the registered databases, restores its own vector cache from SQLite, and speaks JSON-RPC over stdin and stdout. Diagnostics go to stderr, so they never corrupt the protocol stream. Closing stdin ends the session with exit code 0.

The process needs `OPENAI_API_KEY` from the same keychain or environment as the daemon; without it, it exits before the session starts. When the key lives only in an environment variable, pass it through the client entry (for example an `env` block), because the client, not your shell, spawns the process. Because it loads the vector cache at spawn time, its view is a snapshot: files indexed by the daemon afterwards appear only after the MCP session restarts.

## Connect over HTTP

The HTTP transport is off by default: the route is not mounted, so `/mcp` returns 404. Turn it on explicitly:

```bash
kura remote enable
kura remote disable
```

The flag is stored as `remote` in `~/.config/kuradb/config.json`. Routes are mounted during startup, so both commands restart a running daemon to apply the change. Stdio is never affected by this setting.

Once enabled, the daemon mounts the MCP handler on the same `127.0.0.1` listener as the REST API:

```bash
BASE="$(cat ~/.config/kuradb/endpoint)"
curl -X POST "$BASE/mcp" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"probe","version":"0"}}}'
```

The response carries an `Mcp-Session-Id` header that subsequent requests must repeat. Because an unpinned daemon binds a random port on every restart, pin one before writing the URL into a client configuration:

```bash
kura port set 8080
```