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MCP Hourly Rate Calculator in Claude Desktop

Price your hours from income, expenses, and tax, with what-if scenarios. calculate_rate turns desired annual income, billable hours per week, weeks per year, business expenses, and tax rate into a defensible hourly rate; break_even shows the rate that exactly covers costs; what_if re-prices after any single input moves. All arithmetic is exact and the formula is in the source.

Pricing your own rate is a five-minute hallway question you keep re-deriving; here the answer comes back in the chat with every input visible, so renegotiating a rate is one sentence later.

What you get in Claude Desktop

You say	Tool
I want 75,000 a year, 25 billable hours a week, 46 weeks, 12,000 expenses, 28 percent tax.	`calculate_rate`
What if I only manage 40 weeks?	`what_if`
What rate just covers my costs?	`break_even`

The contract suite walks a real stdio case through the formula: 60,000 income plus 10,000 expenses over 1,150 billable hours at a 30 percent tax rate returns an 86.96 break-even-style rate, hostile inputs are refused with a reason, and nothing hangs.

Install it in Claude Desktop

The file is claude_desktop_config.json, and the key inside it is mcpServers.

Scope	Path
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json`

One click, with no JSON. Download hourly-rate.mcpb from the latest release and open it. Claude Desktop installs it as an extension and runs it on the Node runtime it ships with, so neither your PATH nor your node version comes into it, and there is no file to edit. Everything below is the manual route, for when you want the entry in the config file itself.

The config block, which needs both strings absolute:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hourly-rate": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/hourly-rate/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

If node came from nvm, asdf or homebrew, use the absolute path that which node prints rather than the bare word, because a stdio server started by this app inherits a limited PATH:

"command": "/Users/you/.nvm/versions/node/v22.14.0/bin/node"

The node command above wants a built file. From a clone, once:

git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git
cd mcp-servers && npm install
npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/hourly-rate

That writes servers/hourly-rate/dist/index.js, and its absolute path is the one argument the config needs.

The npm packages are not published yet, so the form below returns a 404 today. It is here because it is what the entry becomes the day the publish lands, with nothing else changed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hourly-rate": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@theluckystrike/mcp-hourly-rate"]
    }
  }
}

Save, then completely quit Claude Desktop and start it again. A window reload is not enough.

Nothing is published to npm yet, so the working install paths are the ones above: the .mcpb bundle from the latest release, a clone and build, or the hosted URL.

No install: the hosted endpoint

There is no hosted endpoint for this one yet. MCP Hourly Rate Calculator runs locally over stdio with the config above, which is also the only form in which it reads and writes files on your own disk. Thirty of the servers in this collection are served at https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/<name> over MCP streamable HTTP; https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/connect lists them and prints a ready URL for each.

Claude Desktop notes worth knowing first

Two documented facts decide whether the entry works: every path in claude_desktop_config.json must be absolute, and a stdio server started here inherits only a limited, platform-dependent subset of environment variables. If node came from nvm or homebrew, paste what `which node` prints instead of the bare word. The .mcpb route avoids both: Claude Desktop ships a built-in Node.js environment.

Free: Everything: three tools, no metering, no key. Pro is $19 once, verified offline.

Questions

Where is claude_desktop_config.json?

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json. Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json. There is no published Linux path. Settings, Developer, Edit Config opens the right copy and creates it if it does not exist.

I added it and MCP Hourly Rate Calculator does not appear.

In order: did you fully quit and restart, not just close the window? Is every path absolute? And is the command resolvable, given the limited environment a stdio server inherits here? If node came from nvm, paste what which node prints.

Can I install it without editing JSON?

Yes. An .mcpb bundle, the format renamed from .dxt, opens with Claude and shows an installation dialog. One you built yourself goes in through Settings, Extensions, Advanced settings, Install Extension.

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