If you are having issues getting responses from the MCP tools while working with Claude Code, you may need to tweak some of the default settings of Claude Code.
Recommended Claude Code environment variables settings:
MCP_TOOL_TIMEOUT=120000
MAX_MCP_OUTPUT_TOKENS=100000
Setting the environment variables can also be done in the settings.json file (typically found at ~/.claude/settings.json)
Example:
{
"alwaysThinkingEnabled": true,
"feedbackSurveyState": {
"lastShownTime": 1754169706199
},
"env": {
"MCP_TOOL_TIMEOUT": "1200000",
"MAX_MCP_OUTPUT_TOKENS": "100000"
}
}
You can also set the variable when starting Claude from the command line:
~$ MAX_MCP_OUTPUT_TOKENS=100000 MCP_TOOL_TIMEOUT=120000 claude
The full Claude Code settings can be found :
These optimizations aren't needed when working with the Claude.ai web chat application. Claude.ai already has numerous optimizations for working with external data sources.