sse-bridge (mcp-sse-bridge)

A universal STDIO-to-HTTP/SSE bridge for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

sse-bridge allows local AI desktop clients like Cursor, Claude Desktop, Antigravity, and LMStudio (which typically only support STDIO transports) to communicate natively with remote MCP servers hosted over Server-Sent Events (SSE) via HTTP/HTTPS.

🚀 Installation

Install globally using npm to ensure lightning-fast startup times (bypassing the npx download delay which can cause timeouts in clients like LMStudio):

npm install -g sse-bridge

🛠️ Configuration & Usage

Configure your AI client to use the sse-bridge executable, passing your remote SSE MCP server's URL as the only argument.

For LMStudio

In the LMStudio MCP configuration UI:

• Transport Type: stdio
• Command: /usr/local/bin/sse-bridge (Use the absolute path to avoid PATH resolution issues)
• Arguments: https://your-remote-mcp-server.com/sse

For Cursor, Claude Desktop, or Antigravity

Update your MCP JSON configuration file (e.g. mcp_config.json or claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "my-remote-server": {
      "command": "sse-bridge",
      "args": [
        "https://your-remote-mcp-server.com/sse"
      ]
    }
  }
}

💡 Why sse-bridge instead of npx?

While you can technically use npx -y sse-bridge <url>, tools like LMStudio have very aggressive initialization timeouts (often < 5 seconds). npx must check the registry for updates before execution, causing a 2-5 second delay, which leads to Plugin initialization timed-out errors. Installing it globally via npm install -g sse-bridge guarantees near-instantaneous startup.

📄 License

MIT License