Set up Claude Desktop for Netlify

Learn different ways to set up Claude Desktop for use with Netlify.

This setup guide includes:

• several ways to set up your Claude Desktop agent for success
• how to use the Netlify connector and Netlify agent skills

Run Claude on Netlify without extra setup?

You can use Agent Runners with a Claude agent without any local setup needed.

Before you begin

• Claude Desktop installed.
• A Claude account.
• A Netlify personal account or team workspace.

We recommend you have a project to test deploying. This can be an existing project or a new project.

Quick setup with netlify.ai

Equip your agent with the latest Netlify context, including agent skills:

fetch https://netlify.ai to help me deploy and build with Netlify using the latest agent skills

Need help authenticating?

For help logging in to Netlify, check out our docs on CLI auth.

Connect to the Netlify connector

To connect to the Netlify Connector for Claude:

1. From Claude Desktop, go to Settings, then select Connectors.

   

2. Select Add, search for Netlify, then select Netlify.

3. Select Connect and follow the authorization flow to connect your Netlify account.

   

Use the Netlify connector, not a desktop extension

Netlify is a remote Claude connector. Remote connectors work across Claude surfaces, including Claude Desktop, and are different from local desktop extensions that run on your computer.

Configure tool permissions

After you connect Netlify, configure tool permissions for the Netlify connector. For more context on connector permissions, check out Claude’s docs on restricting actions within connected services.

Permission level	Recommended setting
Read Only	Always allow
Write	Needs approval
Other	Always allow

Install agent skills for Netlify

To help your agent build with best practices, check out our agent skills for building and deploying on Netlify.

You can share a skill directly with your agent or have all skills installed in your local project files or repository. Some agents also support invoking a specific skill by name in a command, such as Claude Desktop with /<skill-name>.

To install agent skills for Netlify with any agent directly in your Claude desktop’s agent chat or terminal window:

npx skills add netlify/context-and-tools --skill '*' --yes

Learn more about agent skills for building and deploying on Netlify in our official agent skills repository.

Invoke Netlify skills

After Claude Desktop has Netlify skills available, type / in the chat composer and select the relevant Netlify skill.

For example, use /netlify-functions when you want Claude Desktop to help build or update Netlify Functions, or /netlify-deploy when you want Claude Desktop to help prepare a deploy.

Use the Netlify connector in Claude Desktop

The Netlify Connector helps simplify your prompts so you don’t have to mention specific tool calls or invoke skills. The connector works by giving Claude the context it needs to choose which tool is needed based on the prompt. This dynamic tool selection is called [concept-name].

Instead, describe the Netlify task you want Claude to complete. When the task needs Netlify access, Claude can load the relevant connector tools and use them for the request.

For example:

Prompt	What Claude can do
”Deploy this project to Netlify.”	Load Netlify deploy tools and start a deploy.
”What’s the status of my latest deploy?”	Load Netlify read tools and fetch deploy status.
”Show me my Netlify projects.”	Load Netlify project tools and list available projects.
”Check my team’s Netlify settings.”	Load Netlify team tools and fetch team information.

Next steps

As a next step, consider deploying your project or building custom experiences with Netlify primitives.

Deploying

When you’re ready to deploy a production version or draft version of your site or app, tell Claude Desktop, which can help you do this. We recommend deciding how you want to deploy first.

Ways to test deploying	Description	CLI command
draft deploy	Safe way to test a deploy without deploying to production	netlify deploy
production deploy	Deploy to the live production version of your site or app, most often used as the first deploy for a new project and less often once the project is live on Netlify	netlify deploy --prod
anonymous deploy	Most often used for temporary projects or for AI agents testing flows, this command can generate a temporary live URL. You have one hour to claim ownership of the deployed project by logging in or creating a Netlify account. After one hour, unclaimed projects are removed.	netlify deploy --allow-anonymous

Learn more about deploy types and the CLI:

• Deploy types
• Get started with the CLI

Building with primitives

After confirming you can deploy successfully, consider building custom experiences with Netlify’s agent skills.

You can try some of these prompt ideas based on the capabilities of Netlify’s primitives:

• “Add a new contact page to my site using Netlify Forms with spam protection”
• “Convert this Express endpoint into a Netlify Function”
• “Implement an Edge Function that geolocates users and rewrites to localized content”
• “Check my netlify.toml configuration for issues”

Troubleshooting Claude Desktop setup for Netlify

Get help with some common troubleshooting issues.

Authentication issues

If you’re having issues logging in to Netlify, consider whether your company has enabled Netlify SSO and whether you need to use a different work login or personal user ID or email to log in.

For more help authenticating to Netlify, check out our docs on CLI auth.

You can prompt Claude Desktop to help you log in, or use the CLI command netlify login.

If your project doesn’t contain sensitive information, you can try running an anonymous deploy using the Netlify CLI to get a test deploy that will expire within an hour unless it is claimed.

Connector issues

If Claude Desktop can’t access Netlify tools, open Claude Desktop Settings, then select Connectors and confirm the Netlify connector is connected.

If the connector is connected but Claude Desktop asks for approval too often or can’t complete an action, check your Netlify connector permissions. We recommend setting read-only tools to Always allow, write/delete tools to Needs Approval, and other tools to Always allow.

Deploy issues

You can try running an anonymous deploy to isolate some deploy issues, such as auth issues. We only recommend this if your project doesn’t contain sensitive information, since the anonymous deploy generates a temporary URL that expires within an hour unless it’s claimed.

Netlify CLI issues

To check that Netlify CLI is installed:

netlify status

To test that you are connected to the correct Netlify account:

netlify login

To directly install latest version of the Netlify CLI, run this command in your terminal:

npm install -g netlify-cli

Then confirm your setup with netlify --help or just netlify.

Keep credentials out of your repo

Never commit Netlify CLI config files or personal access tokens to your repo. If your team uses SSO, make sure your token is authorized for the team. Learn more about setting up a Netlify access token.

Netlify skills don’t install or seem outdated

Try installing or referencing Netlify skills directly from the Netlify agent skills repository.

# Install Netlify skills
npx -y skills add netlify/context-and-tools --skill '*' --yes

If you confirm you have the latest agent skill, you can ask Claude Desktop to use it directly in a session using /<skill-name> or a URL to the skill file in Netlify’s agent skills repository.

Node issues

For the best experience, we recommend using Node 22 or higher.

In your terminal, run node --version to check your current version.

If you have a Node version manager like nvm, you can run nvm install 22 to install Node 22 and nvm use 22 to use it.

For more agent setup guidance, check out the agent setup overview.