Home · Setup · Claude Desktop

MCP Mileage Log in Claude Desktop

Mileage log for deductible driving: trips, effective-dated rates, summaries and CSV export. You log each drive the moment it happens - the date, where from and to, the distance in miles or km, the purpose and the category (business, medical, moving, charitable, personal) - and it comes back with a TR-YYYY-NNNN id, a future date refused because the trip cannot have been driven yet. rate_set records what one mile or km is worth for one category in one jurisdiction from a date forward, an effective-dated series rather than one global number, and each trip earns the rate in force on the day it was driven, rounded half-up to the cent, with totals summed from the rounded per-trip amounts so the CSV reconciles line by line with the summary. Distances in miles and in km are kept apart and never added together; a trip whose unit differs from the rate's is converted first, 1 mile = 1.609344 km exactly. Trips with no applicable rate are listed with the reason, never silently dropped, and the export refuses while any non-personal trip in the window is unpriced, so an accountant never receives a log with silent gaps. No rate ships with the server and none of it is tax advice: the rates you set are your own figures to verify.

The drive gets logged from the desk at the end of the day: trip_add takes the date, from, to, distance and purpose in one sentence, and mileage_summary at tax time is the same window, with every trip priced at the rate in force on its own day.

What you get in Claude Desktop

The contract suite asserts the arithmetic over real stdio: 12.5 miles at 0.70 USD is 875 cents in the list and in the summary total, the twenty-first trip in one calendar month is refused with nothing written while a trip dated in another month logs, the second effective-dated rate is the Pro series while overwriting stays free, and the only files written are trips.json, rates.json and counter.json.

Install it in Claude Desktop

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

One click, no JSON. Download mileage-log.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": {
    "mileage-log": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/mileage-log/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/mileage-log

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

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/mileage-log 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": {
    "mileage-log": {
      "url": "https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/mileage-log",
      "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: Twenty trips per calendar month, counted on the month of the trip date, so reconstructing last year's log at tax time does not consume this month's allowance. The trip list and the summary are never metered, and one rate per jurisdiction and category is free, overwriting it included. 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 Mileage Log 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.

Related

MCP Mileage Log in detail · The same server in Claude.ai and Claude Desktop connectors and Claude Code · Every server in Claude Desktop · Guides · Claude Desktop docs · Buy Pro