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MCP Leave Tracker in Claude Desktop

Staff leave and PTO: requests, approvals, balances, who is out and a calendar export. You add employees with an annual allowance and carried-over days, then requests arrive as vacation, sick, unpaid or parental, full day or half day, inclusive dates. Approve or reject with a reason, re-open a rejected one by approving it, and cancel via leave_reject with a reason. leave_balance is derived on the call (allowance plus carry-over minus approved and pending, rounded down to whole days plus a half day), leave_out_range answers who is out for coverage and calendars with pending counted as a plan, and the import and ICS export move the ledger in and out. EMP and LV numbers are sequential and never reissued.

"Who is out next week, and can I get Taylor's balance" is a question asked in plain English from the same window the manager is writing in, and leave_out_range plus leave_balance answer it without a spreadsheet being opened. The ledger stays local: the server makes no network call on any tool.

What you get in Claude Desktop

You say	Tool
Add Taylor Wren, 25 days a year, 2 carried over from last year.	`leave_employee_add`
Taylor wants next Tuesday to Wednesday off, vacation.	`leave_request`
Who is out the week of the 12th, and can I get Taylor's balance?	`leave_out_range then leave_balance`

The unit suite is 21 tests, 21 passing, 0 failing (node --test, node v22), covering the balance arithmetic, half days, the re-open path and the out-range deduplication, with adversarial, concurrency, paths and contract suites alongside it.

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 leave.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": {
    "leave": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/leave/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/leave

That writes servers/leave/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": {
    "leave": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@theluckystrike/mcp-leave"]
    }
  }
}

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

The same server runs at https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/leave over MCP streamable HTTP, no install. Mint a free token with curl https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/token, or use a Pro key. It has no filesystem, so a file comes back as a one-hour download link.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "leave": {
      "url": "https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/leave",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <token>" }
    }
  }
}

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: Employees, requests, approvals, rejections, balances, the out-range view and the lists are free and unlimited; nothing a manager decides in a morning sits behind a paywall. Reads are free on every tier. 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 Leave Tracker 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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