How to get push notifications from Claude using MCP

You kick off a big task in Claude — a refactor across twenty files, a deep research run, a long build — and then you go make coffee. Or lunch. Or you just tab away and forget. Ten minutes later you wander back and... it's been done for eight of them, sitting there waiting.

Here's the fix: let Claude tap you on the shoulder. TheNotificationApp ships an MCP server, so Claude can send a push notification straight to your iPhone the second it's done — or the second it gets stuck and needs you.

No API keys to copy around. No SDK. You connect it once with Sign in with Apple, and from then on you just ask Claude to notify you.

Step 1 — Add the connector

In Claude, open Settings → Connectors and click Add custom connector. Fill in two fields and leave the OAuth ones blank:

Name:        thenotification.app
Server URL:  https://thenotification.app/api/mcp
OAuth Client ID:     (leave blank)
OAuth Client Secret: (leave blank)

That's the whole config. The blank OAuth fields are on purpose — auth happens in the next step, not with a pasted secret.

Step 2 — Sign in with Apple

Hit Connect. Claude bounces you to a Sign in with Apple screen. Approve it, and the connector gets a short-lived token scoped to your account.

This is the part I like: there's no long-lived API key sitting in your settings for something to leak. The token is short-lived and tied to your Apple ID, and notifications land on the same iPhone you already signed in with. Privacy is kind of the whole point — the app is Swiss-hosted and doesn't store your notifications.

Once you finish to connect you should see the following :

Step 3 — Ask Claude to notify you

Now just say it in plain English. Some that work:

• "When you finish this refactor, send me a notification titled 'Refactor done.'"
• "Ping my phone if any test fails and tell me which one."
• "Send myself a notification titled 'Build done' that links to https://github.com/me/project/actions"

Claude can set the title, the body, a tap-through link (so the notification opens straight to your GitHub Actions run or a dashboard), and even an image preview — handy for a chart or screenshot it just generated.

Got more than one app set up? Claude can call list_applications to grab the right ID — you say "send it to my Side Project app" and it figures out the rest.

Under the hood it's still one HTTP call

The MCP tool is a friendly wrapper over the same endpoint you'd hit yourself. If you ever want to fire it from a script instead of from Claude, it's one POST:

curl -X POST https://thenotification.app/api/sendNotification \
  -H "app_key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Build done",
    "body": "All 142 tests passed",
    "link": "https://github.com/me/project/actions"
  }'

Same notification, same phone. The MCP connector just means Claude can pull that trigger for you without you writing the curl. Full details are in the MCP docs and the API reference, and if you'd rather wire it into a shell script, the single-curl guide covers that.

Real talk

Two honest caveats. First, Claude only notifies you when it decides the task hit a notify-worthy point — if you want a ping, say so in your prompt; don't assume it'll read your mind. Second, the free tier caps at 100 notifications total across up to 3 apps. Plenty for "tell me when the long job's done," but if you fire one on every tool call you'll burn through it fast — Pro is $2.99/month for 1,000 a month.

Worth it if you walk away from long tasks

If you start something in Claude and then go do literally anything else, this closes the loop. Connect it once, then just ask. Set it up here — the free tier is enough to try it today.