How to ask Claude what's eating your Mac's CPU (MCP setup)

You can ask AI assistants like Claude, Codex or Cursor about issues slowing down your Mac, and receive answers based on live data instead of generic advice. To do this, you need to set up an MCP server on your Mac that reports the running processes. This can be done by registering the server once, after which the assistant can call it whenever needed. The setup is demonstrated using Binnacle, a menu bar monitor with an integrated MCP server called binnacle-mcp.

The assistant calls specific tools provided by the MCP server to gather information about the machine. These tools include system_status, which provides a snapshot of the entire Mac, showing processes, load, temperatures, fans, GPU, battery status, disk space, and Bluetooth battery levels; top_apps, which lists the busiest apps and folds helper processes into their respective app; app_details, which provides information about a specific app such as CPU usage, memory usage, processes, and listening ports; who_uses_port, which identifies the process listening on a specific TCP port and the folder it was started in; dev_servers, which lists the servers running inside project folders along with their ports and memory usage; and request_quit, which opens a confirmation dialog to allow the user to decide whether to quit an app.

The assistant can answer questions about CPU usage, fan noise, temperature, and the processes listening on a specific port. However, the assistant cannot act independently and make decisions about killing processes. This was done intentionally to prevent the assistant from making incorrect guesses leading to potential problems. For CPU-related questions, the assistant reports the percentage of one core that an app is using. On multi-core Macs, an app using 250% of a core is using two and a half cores.

To set up the MCP server in Claude Code, you need to use the claude mcp add command followed by the path to the binnacle-mcp binary, which can be found in the Binnacle app. The server communicates over stdio, so no additional hosting is required. Once the server is registered and turned on in Binnacle, you can ask the assistant questions about your Mac's performance and receive detailed answers based on live data.