How We Got Local MCP Servers Working in Claude Cowork (The Missing Guide)

Claude Code's Cowork mode runs in a sandboxed VM that blocks local stdio MCP servers, leading many to believe MCP is unsupported. The authors solved this using two layers: Claude Desktop's built-in SDK bridge that automatically proxies locally-configured MCP servers, and supergateway to convert additional stdio MCP servers into HTTP endpoints managed by pm2. This approach enabled 18+ MCP servers to work reliably in Cowork, with optional Tailscale support for cross-machine access.