Open the server settings
Under Settings, select the Kombai MCP Server tab. The tab is available in the desktop app only. If the server is running, you will see a Running badge with the port it’s listening on, above the Clients section. If it reads The MCP bridge is not running, restart Kombai to bring it back.The server runs when you are using the Kombai app. There’s no separate on/off
switch for it. Turning a client on or off only changes that client’s
configuration.
Supported clients
Kombai detects these clients and writes its entry into each one’s own user-level configuration file:
Kombai shows a Detected badge for each client it finds on your machine, and a Not Installed badge for those it doesn’t. If your client isn’t detected, install it first, then restart Kombai to detect it.
You can also connect a client manually if it’s not listed above. To do so, copy the snippet under Configure manually into your client’s own MCP configuration. To use the skills there as well, place each skill’s
SKILL.md at <skill-name>/SKILL.md in that client’s skills folder.
Connect a client
1
Turn the client on
Toggle a detected client on. Kombai adds itself to that client’s MCP configuration and installs the Kombai skills into the client’s skills folder.
2
Use a skill from the client
In the client, type the skill you want to use. For example,
/design-with-kombai to hand that task to Kombai.Toggling the client off removes both the configuration entry and the skills.
View a chat from your coding agent
When an MCP-connected coding agent like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex starts or checks on a Kombai chat, it can give you a link to that exact conversation and its design canvas. Click the link to open the conversation in your agent’s browser and follow the work without switching to the full Kombai desktop app. The page shows a This chat is running in the Kombai app. notice to make it clear that the conversation is running in Kombai. For this view to work, the Kombai desktop app must be running with the chat’s project open. This feature isn’t available through the IDE extension.Installed skills
Kombai installs a set of skills into each client it connects to. These skills let the client hand tasks to Kombai and read the results back. Each skill is a folder with aSKILL.md file that describes what it does and how to use it.