Harvest MCP Server
Work with Harvest time tracking: list and create time entries, start and stop timers, look up projects, clients, tasks and users, and manage estimates.
- Maintained by
- Community (Barie)
- Hosting
- Runs locally on your machine
- Authentication
- None beyond local access
- Last checked
Needs your Harvest account ID and API key; set --read-only to false to allow changes.
How to connect the Harvest MCP server
Pick your AI client and paste the snippet. Swap the YOUR_… placeholders for your own values. New to this? Our guide to how MCP clients and servers fit together explains what each piece does.
Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport stdio harvest \
-- uvx harvest-mcp --account-id YOUR_HARVEST_ACCOUNT_ID --api-key YOUR_HARVEST_API_KEY --read-only trueClaude Desktop
{
"mcpServers": {
"harvest": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"harvest-mcp",
"--account-id",
"YOUR_HARVEST_ACCOUNT_ID",
"--api-key",
"YOUR_HARVEST_API_KEY",
"--read-only",
"true"
]
}
}
}Fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop after saving.
Full Claude Desktop setup guide →Cursor
{
"mcpServers": {
"harvest": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"harvest-mcp",
"--account-id",
"YOUR_HARVEST_ACCOUNT_ID",
"--api-key",
"YOUR_HARVEST_API_KEY",
"--read-only",
"true"
]
}
}
}VS Code
{
"servers": {
"harvest": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"harvest-mcp",
"--account-id",
"YOUR_HARVEST_ACCOUNT_ID",
"--api-key",
"YOUR_HARVEST_API_KEY",
"--read-only",
"true"
]
}
}
}Frequently asked questions
What is the Harvest MCP server?
It is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — a small piece of software that gives AI assistants like Claude a secure, governed connection to Harvest. Work with Harvest time tracking: list and create time entries, start and stop timers, look up projects, clients, tasks and users, and manage estimates.
Is there an official Harvest MCP server?
Not from Harvest itself. This one is community-maintained (Barie). It is widely used, but review the repository and pin a version before relying on it in production.
Is the Harvest MCP server hosted, or do I run it myself?
It runs locally. Your AI client starts it on your own machine with uvx, and it talks to the client over standard input and output rather than the network.
Do I need an API key for the Harvest MCP server?
No. It runs on your machine with your own permissions, so there is no key to create.
What can an AI assistant actually do with Harvest?
Through this server an assistant can work with time entries, start and stop timers, projects, clients and tasks, estimates — reading from and acting on Harvest directly instead of you copy-pasting between windows. What you allow it to do is controlled by the permissions you grant.
How do I set this up for my business?
The setup section above has copy-paste config for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and VS Code. Once it is running against real systems, the question becomes what catches it when it acts wrongly, which is what Crox's Safety Diagnostic looks at.
New to MCP? Start with our plain-English guide to the Model Context Protocol or see how to connect AI to your business tools without writing code .
Already running this in production?
An agent with a live connection to your tools is a model that can act. Crox looks at what catches it when it acts wrongly: the layers around it, who can stop it, and where a near miss gets reported. Two days, one team, one model.