Claude across every machine

Claude Code runs on the macOS mothership and every Linux utility node; Claude Desktop runs on macOS. All of them pull the same MCP servers and the same plugins from one chezmoi-managed source — edit a single file, chezmoi apply, and every app on every box converges.

What runs where

App	macOS (mothership)	Linux (utility nodes)	Config file
Claude Code	✓	✓	~/.claude.json
Claude Desktop	✓	— (no Linux build)	~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

One source, every app

The merge handles the things that must differ, so you don't have to:

• Per app — Code tags each server with type and talks to the remote servers (github, outline) over native http; Desktop omits type and bridges them through npx mcp-remote.
• Per OS — signal's uv path and PATH differ macOS vs Linux; the merge injects the right ones for the box it's running on.

"Same MCPs across the board" — with one honest caveat

The config is identical on every machine, and no server needs Docker — they're all npx/go stdio launchers or remote HTTP endpoints. Whether a given server actually connects depends only on a lightweight runtime being present:

Server	Connects where
chrome-devtools, karakeep, outline	everywhere (Node)
github	everywhere (remote hosted — just the PAT)
gitea	everywhere (Go build cache is warmed by chezmoi)
signal	everywhere, once the node is device-linked → Signal

So the goal — the same servers offered to Claude on every machine — is met by the config. The only per-box step is the one-time Signal device link; everything else connects straight after chezmoi apply.

→ MCP servers · Plugins · Signal