A step-by-step guide to integrating Kali Linux with Claude Desktop on macOS via Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling natural language control of penetration testing tools. The setup involves three components: macOS running Claude Desktop as the UI and MCP client, a Kali Linux instance (local or cloud) as the attack box, and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 as the LLM. The guide covers SSH key setup between macOS and Kali, installing mcp-kali-server along with tools like nmap, gobuster, nikto, and metasploit, and configuring Claude Desktop's MCP client to SSH into Kali and execute commands. The result allows users to issue natural language prompts like 'port scan scanme.nmap.org' and have the LLM translate and execute the appropriate commands automatically.

10m read timeFrom kali.org
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SSHMCP Server (MCP Kali Server)Claude DesktopMCP Client (Claude Desktop)Recap

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