apple-dev

Apple Dev MCP server provides access to three core tools optimized for Apple development content. First, the Design Guidelines Search lets you query the Apple Human Interface Guidelines with platform filters to retrieve full design content suitable for AI-assisted responses. Second, the Technical Documentation Search lets you query Apple API documentation across frameworks like SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit, including symbol and method lookups with code examples. Third, the Unified Search combines both design and technical documentation to provide cross-referenced results that connect design guidance with implementation details. You can invoke these tools by sending JSON requests with the appropriate tool name and arguments, for example searching guidelines by platform or searching a specific framework in code examples. The server is designed to return developer-friendly results that you can directly use in your Apple platform projects.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18+ and npm installed on your system

Install the MCP server globally via npm:

npm install -g apple-dev-mcp

Run the MCP server (after installation, the CLI may be exposed as a global command named or aliased to apple-dev-mcp; if not, you can start it directly via Node):

# If a CLI entry point is provided
apple-dev-mcp

# Otherwise, run the server script directly
node $(npm root -g)/apple-dev-mcp/dist/server.js

Configuration references you may use (example shown is for Claude Desktop, but can be adapted to other integrations):

• Ensure the server path matches where npm installed the package (see above) and that Node 18+ is present.
• For non-interactive environments, you can provide explicit command/args in your MCP config as shown in the mcp_config section.

Optional: If you prefer using npx without global install, you can run:

npx -y apple-dev-mcp

Tips:

• The server exposes three core tools: search_human_interface_guidelines, search_technical_documentation, and search_unified. Use the exact tool names in your requests.
• If you encounter path issues, verify the dist/server.js path used in the mcp_config matches your npm global install location.
• For Windows users, adapt paths to the npm global node_modules location and ensure the node binary is in PATH.
• The Quick Start references Claude Desktop installation; the MCP server itself is framework-agnostic and can be plugged into various editors like Claude Code, Windsurf, Cursor, or VS Code by configuring mcp.json equivalents.
• When upgrading, re-run npm install -g apple-dev-mcp to ensure you have the latest server.js and tool implementations.