Add brandRNA to Claude Desktop

Why connect Claude Desktop to brandRNA

Hand any URL to Claude in conversation and get back the brand's colours, fonts, logos, and design language. Useful for "what colours match stripe.com?" prompts, comparing brand voice across competitors, or pulling ready-to-use design tokens straight into a follow-up coding session.

Install

File path: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows)

1. Open the file shown above (create it if missing)
2. Paste this JSON snippet (merge with existing mcpServers if any)
3. Restart Claude Desktop
4. When prompted, sign in to your BrandRNA account in your browser
5. In a Claude conversation, ask: "analyze https://stripe.com"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brandrna": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.brandrna.com"]
    }
  }
}

What you can do once connected

Try these prompts in any Claude conversation:

• "Analyze https://stripe.com — what colors should I use for a Stripe-themed UI?"
• "Compare the brand voice of monzo.com vs revolut.com."
• "Pull the canonical logo from acme.io and tell me what file format it's in."

Claude will call the analyze_brand tool, wait for the result (a few seconds for cached domains, up to ~30s for first-time analyses), and stitch the structured response back into the conversation.

Common gotchas

• OAuth popup blocked → Allow popups for auth.brandrna.com in your default browser. Claude Desktop opens the consent dialog there, not in-app.
• mcp-remote not found → You need Node.js 18+ on PATH. The npx -y mcp-remote shim downloads it on first run, but Node has to be installed first.
• Restart required after editing the config → Quit Claude Desktop fully (Cmd+Q on macOS, right-click tray icon → Quit on Windows) and reopen. In-app reload doesn't pick up config changes.
• macOS keychain prompt on first launch → Allow access; this stores the refresh token securely so you don't re-auth on every restart.
• Windows JSON path quoting → If you copy the file path from Explorer, watch for backslashes. The config JSON parser is strict — use forward slashes or doubled-up backslashes (\\).

Behind the scenes

Curious how the OAuth dance works? See the canonical OAuth explainer — covers CIMD, PKCE, audience binding, and brandRNA's per-(uid, client_id) internal key minting.