Claude Desktop | Using AI with Webflow

Published

April 26, 2025

Claude Desktop offers a convenient way to interact with Anthropic's Claude LLM, without needing browser tab switching.

Claude is noted for its large context window size which makes it better at certain tasks like coding, compared with e.g. ChatGPT.

Primary Uses

Basic

Writing text, working out article and blog content.
Writing code in a "vibe coding" manner.

Advanced

Claude Desktop offers Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) Support, which means that it can interact directly with MCP servers including the one provided by Webflow.

Get information about your Webflow site content and pages
Create blog articles and rewrite content including rich text content

For details on Claude Desktop and MCP specifically see Sygnal's MCP course.

Claude's API ( separate from desktop ) can also be used with tools like VS Code for stronger integration directly into the coding process.

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_99

MCP Support

Claude Desktop is one of the first applications to fully integrate Model Context Protocol (MCP), which allows it to connect with external services like Webflow.

This powerful application brings Anthropic's advanced AI capabilities directly to your computer, with enhanced features not available in the browser version.

Key Features of Claude Desktop

Native MCP Integration - Built-in support for connecting to external data sources and tools
Projects - Organize conversations and save important context in dedicated workspaces
Extended Thinking - Access to Claude's more thorough reasoning capabilities
Offline File Processing - Analyze local files without uploading them to the cloud
Enhanced Performance - Faster response times compared to the web version

Resources

For more information about using Claude Desktop with Webflow:

Problems & Limitations

As of 2025-04-26 these are the most significant limitations I've encountered.

Developer Configuration, MCPs and Restarting Claude Desktop

There's no way to restart Claude completely, and have it reload fully including MCPs. Often it's not even possible to kill Claude in the processes window, and there are usually 7-10 processes running. This means the only way to adjust MCP configs is to completely reboot the computer. This is SUCH a pain in the middle of a development project.

Reliability, Blank Screen Problem

Sometimes the Claude screen just goes blank. No error, no UI. Reload from the top left menu sometimes words, and sometimes nothing. If you manage to reload it, it often loses the last conversation piece as though it never happened and you have to start over. Again a huge problem in MCP, where it just made a whole bunch of API calls and db changes.

Difficulty Finding important content

Find. Convos get long. A simple CTRL+F to locate previous dialog, code, etc would be very helpful. Even starred responses so they can be quickly located. Even whatsapp has both and the convos are so much shorter.

Overall I love the tool and the idea, the model is great and Desktop is a big step towards making it more accessible outside of the browser tab, but these problems are extremely painful

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