Does Serena work with Claude Desktop?
Yes. Serena passed every step of our test in Claude Desktop on Oct 14, 2026: it installed, connected, its tools were visible, and an agent used it to finish a real task.
Result
ResultPassed
Date testedOct 14, 2026
Plan tested onNot recorded for this run
App versionClaude Desktop 2.37337.1 (Linux beta)
Steps
- install OK
- connected OK
- tools visible OK
- agent task: find definition OKsymbol lookup + one cross-file reference in a 2-file Python repo (git history has 1 commit, so git-only tools can answer via git_show)
Test note: server wrapped in harness/scripts/mcp_tee.py to record JSON-RPC; prompts typed via xdotool; tool Allow pop-ups approved by the operator for test servers only; model = app default
From our own harness run, not the maker’s claims. How we test.
What happened in this run
Install config we used
{
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"--from",
"git+https://github.com/oraios/serena",
"serena",
"start-mcp-server",
"--context",
"ide-assistant"
]
}Connection check
initialize seen in tee log after app restartTools check
tools/list answered (tee log)
Agent task: find definition
- 3 calls reached the server
- Agent’s answer (excerpt):
Defined in: billing.py; Called from: utils.py
Raw details from our harness log for this run. Secrets redacted.
Set it up in Claude Desktop
Copy-paste config for every app is on the Serena page. Not connecting? Claude Desktop MCP troubleshooting.
Other apps we tested it in: Claude Code (passed) · Cursor (passed) · ChatGPT (Codex) (passed).