How can you run Laravel Boost's MCP server in a Docker container?

Use this sample config

Joel Clermont

2025-10-07

I recently installed Laravel Boost on a project and one of the things I wanted to play with was the MCP server.

But when I tried to get Claude Code to list the available tools, it had a problem connecting to the MCP server, which was running in a Docker container.

The default .mcp.json configuration assumed that the MCP server could be started via PHP running on the host machine.

In order to make it work, I had to change that file to reflect running the command via Docker:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "laravel-boost": {
            "command": "docker",
            "args": [
                "exec",
                "-i",
                "CONTAINER_NAME",
                "php",
                "artisan",
                "boost:mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

If you're going to use this, make sure to replace CONTAINER_NAME with the name of your PHP Docker container.

One other important detail that I got wrong the first time is the -i flag to docker exec. This flag is necessary to keep stdin open without a terminal session, which is required for the MCP server to work properly.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. We recently published a new volume of our Laravel tips ebook. Pick up the new volume each quarter and collect them all.

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