I love using Claude Desktop and Cursor, but I kept running into a wall: Context Switching.
Every time I needed to reference my project specs, meeting notes, or task lists, I had to Alt-Tab to Notion, copy the text, and paste it into the chat. It felt archaic.
I looked for existing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for Notion, but most were designed to run locally via stdio. This meant keeping a terminal window open forever, dealing with Python dependencies, and restarting it every time my laptop went to sleep.
So, I built my own solution.
🛠 What I Built
I created a Cloud-Native Notion MCP Server that runs 24/7 using Server-Sent Events (SSE).
Stack: Node.js, TypeScript, Express.
Transport: Native MCP over SSE (instead of stdio).
Hosting: Deploys easily on Apify (runs on the free tier).
Security: Bearer Token authentication (so you don't leak secrets).
🚀 Why do this?
By moving the MCP server to the cloud, you turn Notion into a persistent "knowledge backend" for your AI.
Always On: No need to run npm start locally.
Secure: Tokens are managed via environment variables, not hardcoded in your local config.
Multi-Client: Connect both Claude Desktop and Cursor to the same instance.
⚙️ How to set it up (5 minutes)
Here is how you can set it up for free using the Apify platform.
Step 1: Deploy the Server
I wrapped the code into an Apify Actor. You can deploy it with one click (no credit card required for the free tier).
👉 https://apify.com/piskunlab/notion-mcp-server
Once deployed, copy your Actor URL and set your NOTION_TOKEN.
Step 2: Configure Claude/Cursor
Since we are using SSE, we don't need to point to a local file. We point to the cloud URL.
For Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):
JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"notion-cloud": {
"command": "",
"args": [],
"url": "https://your-actor-url.apify.actor/sse",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN"
}
}
}
}
Step 3: Test it out
Restart Claude. You should see a generic "mcp-server" icon. Now you can ask:
"Read the page 'Project Roadmap' and summarize the tasks for this week." "Create a new bug report in my 'Bugs' database."
🔧 Under the Hood
For those interested in the code, the project is open-source. It uses the official @modelcontextprotocol/sdk mapped to Express endpoints.
GET /sse establishes the event stream.
POST /message handles the JSON-RPC traffic.
It handles Rate Limiting to ensure you don't hit Notion's API limits too hard.
Check out the code here: 👉 https://github.com/piskunproject/notion-mcp-server
I'm planning to build similar persistent servers for GitHub and Slack next. Let me know in the comments if you have any feature requests!
Happy coding! 🚀
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