Every server in this repository runs both ways: as a local process your client starts, and as an HTTPS endpoint you paste a URL for. They are the same code. What differs is what each can reach and who sees the data.
| Local (stdio) | Hosted (HTTPS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Install | .mcpb bundle, or clone and build | Nothing. Paste a URL. |
| Reads your files | Yes, any path you name | No. It cannot see your disk. |
| Data lives | ~/.local/share/mcp-servers/, plain JSON | On the server, keyed to your token |
| Network calls | None, for 28 of the 30 servers | Every call, by definition |
| Rate limit | None | 600 calls an hour on the free anonymous token |
| Retention | Until you delete the folder | 30 days, refreshed for another 30 on every write |
| Works in claude.ai | No | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
Reading your files. The spreadsheet, PDF, image and zip servers exist to work on files on your disk, and a hosted endpoint cannot see your disk. Nothing about that is a limitation to be engineered away: it is what remote means. If your task starts with a file path, it has to run locally.
The record-keeping servers are the opposite case. The invoice, quotes, deposits, statement, time-tracker and expense servers hold their own data, so a hosted install of those is genuinely usable from a browser with nothing installed at all.
Open mcp/connect and it mints one, in the form
anon_ plus 32 hex characters, and prints a ready URL per server with the token in the
path. There is no header to configure and no sign-up. Two things that page states plainly and this one
repeats: anyone holding the URL holds that data space, so treat it as a secret; and reloading the page
mints a new token and a new empty space, so keep the URL if you want to keep the data.
A build step, today. The npm packages are not published: a probe of
registry.npmjs.org on 2026-09-07 returned no versions for the packages, matching the npm
status section of the repository README. So it is the .mcpb bundle, which is a double
click in Claude Desktop and needs no terminal, or a clone and npm run build. Once built
there is no update mechanism beyond pulling and rebuilding.
# local: a process your client starts
claude mcp add --scope user invoice -- node /absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/invoice/dist/index.js
# hosted: a URL, nothing installed
claude mcp add --transport http invoice https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/invoice/t/YOUR_TOKENSame server, same tools, same free tier. The first can open a file on your disk and the second cannot.
You can, and they are separate data spaces. An invoice created locally is not visible through the hosted URL and there is no sync between them. Pick one per server and stay with it, or you will be looking for a document in the wrong store.
A Pro key is an Ed25519 signature verified locally inside the server, with no activation server to reach. That means an air-gapped local install activates from the key string alone, and the hosted endpoints accept the same key in place of the anonymous token. One purchase, either deployment.
It adds a network round trip per tool call, which is real but small next to the model's own latency. A scored nine-step run against the local stdio bundle took 17 tool calls in 118.6 seconds, recorded in docs/USER_VALUE_R27.md, and almost all of that time was the model rather than the servers.
The data space expires. Every write refreshes it for another 30 days, so an actively used token does not lapse. A token you used once in March is gone by May, deliberately: the alternative is holding strangers' invoice data forever.
Use the export tools. expense_export, statement_export, export_csv on the time tracker and ledger_export_csv all produce text you can carry across. There is no store-level migration, and the export path is the honest one because it produces something you can read and check.
Local, without qualification. 28 of the 30 servers make no network call at all, and you can prove it by running one in a network namespace with no interfaces and watching every tool still answer. A hosted server necessarily sees what you send it, and no policy statement changes that.
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